Winchester, Interrupted: The Further Adventures of Alyson Winchester
by WaywardDaughter18
Summary: This is the sequel to "The Adventures of Alyson Winchester" and takes place in that AU. Aly struggles to cope with the aftermath of her experiences with the YED and figure out how to deal with her powers. The Winchester men realize that in order to help her, they all need to work on changing. Possible spanking of a minor in later chapters; if you don't like it, don't read.
1. Chapter 1

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a continuation of the story, "The Adventures of Alyson Winchester". You may want to read that story first, so that what is happening in this one makes sense.**

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

I heard a beeping sound and then a tinny sounding voice, speaking in a panicked tone- "We've got a G.S.W. to the lower left quadrant, we need a transfusion in O.R. 3, _STAT!_ "

A voice said, "Oh no, that's Tiffany, Dr. Sexy's newest intern! She was in a bad part of town and must have been in the wrong place at the wrong time! He doesn't know she's been shot yet!" The voice was familiar to me.

Another voice said, "I can't believe you still watch that crap, Dean." It was familiar too.

The first voice said, "Come on, Sammy, it's not that bad. Dr. Sexy is actually a Julliard-trained actor, and some of the writing on the show is really good."

The second voice scoffed.

I heard melodramatic music swelling in the background. Then it was as if something slid into place in my mind- the voices I was hearing were my brothers...

... I had woken up earlier in a hospital bed in a darkened room in the middle of the night. Bobby Singer was sitting by my bed, baseball cap on his head just like always and a cup of coffee- and probably something else- in his hand.

He had looked at me and said, "Aly, you're awake," and for the first time ever I saw his eyes fill with tears and then the tears actually spill over. When he had brought his hand up to his face to wipe his eyes with his fingers I had flinched, and he noticed.

He had slowly reached out and put his hand on my arm gently and patted it, and then told me, "I'm gonna go get Calvin." After he left the room I looked down- I had tubes and needles taped to my arms and I could feel something in my nose as well. I looked around the room- there was a small table in the corner with a small t.v. on it, a low padded bench, and a couple of chairs. Just moving my head slightly to look around made me dizzy. I wondered where my brothers were. I wondered if Bobby was sitting with me because he was the only one who could stand me now.

Calvin had come into the room and greeted me, and at the sight of his familiar face I had gotten tears in my eyes. He wasn't a member of my family, he had no reason to hate me or reject me...so maybe he was safe. He was a doctor after all, and their first responsibility was to their patients.

Bobby had excused himself, and Calvin had examined me, and then taken out the nasogastric tube and other various tubing. He had walked me to the bathroom, his arm around my waist, and set me on the toilet so I could try and pee after having had a catheter in. It took a while but I was successful. Standing up again made me dizzy, and I banged on the bathroom door to let him know I was done. He had brought me back to the bed and told me, "Everyone's gonna be real happy to see ya, little lady."

I just looked at him.

"Bobby finally convinced 'em to let him do night duty, so they could get some rest. They've been here by your bed practically 24-7. They should be up in a couple hours."

He re-attached my IV and then pulled the covers up. "I'll see about takin' your IV out later in the day. Get some rest."

I was surprised at how tired out I had gotten just from walking to and from the bathroom, but almost as soon as he had left the room, I had fallen asleep again...

I opened my eyes slightly and looked around, just moving my eyes.

Dean was sitting in a chair by the table in the corner, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, focused on the small television on a table in the corner. Sam was standing a couple of feet behind him, leaning on the wall. He had a mug in each hand.

"Do you want your coffee or not?" he asked.

Dean turned in the chair and reached up, and Sam held one of the mugs out. Dean took it and then started to turn back towards the t.v. He glanced over at me and then stopped and stared at me for a moment.

"Sam," he said quietly, looking up at him, "I think she's awake." He sounded nervous and hopeful.

Then he turned his head and looked at me. "Alyson?" he said in a hoarse voice.

I moved my head a little bit and opened my eyes all the way.

"Aly, oh my God!" Dean's voice was relieved and scared.

Dean got up, putting his cup on the bench, and Sam bent down and placed his cup next to Dean's and then they both rushed over to me, each of them going to one side of the bed.

I felt startled by the sudden movement and pulled my knees up in front of me and wrapped my arms around them so I was curled into a ball.

"You're awake!" Dean said loudly, leaning down and trying to take my hand.

I flinched again and pulled my hand away from him, tensing up. I put my head down on my knees as I felt tears come to my eyes.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Aly, what's wrong?" Sam asked in a quiet voice. "Look at me. Talk to me. You're okay, you're safe now."

I didn't _feel_ safe. I twisted my shoulder out of his grasp. I didn't know if I could trust them- or anything. I felt on edge- I could barely remember what had happened before, but I did remember that there were demons, so many demons, and I remembered how terrified I had felt. My memories had also gotten jumbled up with the dreams I had been having too, so I felt like I didn't even know what was real and what was a dream.

I turned my head slightly and peered at him over my knees. I watched as he blinked- his eyes looked wet with tears, but they didn't change to black or yellow, they were the same hazel eyes that Sam had always had. His forehead was creased with worried lines. He raised his eyebrows as he saw me looking at him.

Then I buried my head on my knees again. "You won't want me." I said hoarsely.

"What?" Dean said. I felt a hand touch my arm, and the side of the bed gave a little as he sat down. "What are you talking about?"

I lifted my head and glanced at him briefly. He was facing me, and he looked confused and worried. I spoke to my knees. I said, "I ran away. I did- I did all sorts of terrible things. I was living in a houseful of demons! I'm a monster now- I can do things with my mind, move things and see the future- I'm a _monster_ , and I can't be part of this family!" My voice was loud and agonized by the end of my speech.

Tears filled my eyes and I lowered my head onto my knees and took a deep breath, trying not to be overcome with emotion.

"What the hell?" Dean asked incredulously. "What do you mean? We rescued you, you're safe now, that's all we've wanted is to get you back and make sure you're okay."

"I'm not okay," I rasped. My throat was so sore and dry.

"Alyson," Sam said. "Aly, look at me." He put his hand gently on my shoulder again and I gave a small gasp.

I peeked at him again as he leaned down to look me in the face.

"Aly, I can do those things too. I can move things with my mind, and I had premonitions, and you and I- we communicated with each other, didn't we? Remember how we sent each other those memories and images? Does that mean I'm a monster too? Should I not be part of this family either?"

I hadn't thought of that. When Azazel had been talking to me he had always talked about how _I_ was the freak of the family, the monster that they wouldn't want back, the one with the freakish abilities that my family would want to hunt. I had forgotten about how Sam and I had communicated with each other. Would Azazel have said those things to me if he knew about Sam? Had he known about Sam as well? Maybe he had just been saying those things to make me feel bad and make me not trust my family?

But then, I _had_ run away from them. Running away was a big no-no in our family. When Sam had run away to Flagstaff he had gotten into _huge_ trouble with Dad, _and_ Dean, afterwards. It had been a horrible time for all of us. Had they been upset about me being gone, as upset as I remembered being about Sam? I had thought that they would have been relieved to have gotten away from me, relieved that they weren't burdened with having to take care of me anymore. Or was that more lies that Azazel had put into my head?

I felt confused, and that made my head ache.

"I—I don't know!" I said, and tried to clear my throat. I wrapped my arms tighter around my legs and buried my face in my knees again, curling up tighter.

"What's- what- why is she acting like this?" Dean sounded distressed. "I thought she'd be happy to see us! What's- I don't understand!" I felt a hand on my arm again and I wrenched myself away from it, making a scratchy shrieking sound in my throat.

"Let me go get Calvin." I heard Sam say, and then I heard the squeak of door hinges.

I felt the bed shift as Dean stood up and I heard him walk away. I glanced quickly over at him- he was facing away from me, his head down slightly, and I saw his shoulders shake a little bit. He raked his hand through his hair, sighing, and then he brought his hand up and wiped his eyes as he turned back towards me.

The door opened again and Sam came back in, followed by Calvin. They walked over to the bed and Calvin looked at me.

"Well howdy, little lady," he said, "Good to see you again." He smiled kindly at me. I noticed then that there were people behind him, I could see the familiar baseball cap on Uncle Bobby's head, but then-

Calvin stepped to the side, and then my father walked over to the bed. I felt stunned- the last time I had seen him, he had had a knife in his chest and I was certain he was dying. How could he be standing here, alive, looking at me, unless-

He looked down at me, smiling, and there were tears in his eyes.

"Oh, Alyson, I'm so glad to see you," he said, and his voice was full of emotion. "Baby girl-" he reached for me, and I moved away from him on the bed, over to the opposite edge.

"NO!" I screamed loudly, and immediately regretted it, as my throat now felt like it was on fire.

"What?" the man who looked like my father said. His face looked devastated, and I watched him, waiting for his eyes to change color. "Alyson, what's wro-"

"How can you-" I looked up at Sam.

"Alyson, what-" Dean started to say at the same time.

"It's a demon!" I shrieked, and my voice cracked. I burst into tears and pulled the covers up to my chin, as if that would help protect me from its powers.

All of them were looking at each other as if they were trying to figure out what to say.

"Why do you think that?" Sam asked calmly.

"The last thing I remember...was seeing Dad get stabbed! The knife went in...all the way up to the hilt!" I looked up at Sam and then at Dean, imploringly. "How could he be alive now, unless a demon was possessing him?"

My brothers looked at each other, doing their "talking without words" thing that they do sometimes.

"How much do you remember of the rescue?" Sam asked.

I thought back, but all I got was a jumble of images, and I couldn't sort through them right then.

"I don't know..." I said. "Why?"

"The angel, do you remember him?" Dean asked, and his tone was urgent.

I looked up at him. "Angel? There wasn't an angel there!" I looked around me in a panic. They were trying to tell me that there had been an angel in the midst of all those demons- oh my God! What if all of them were possessed, and just trying to trick me so I would let my guard down-

" _No!"_ I tried to shriek again, but my voice gave out. "There was no angel there, you're lying!" I glared up at Dean. "Who the hell are you? Are you _all_ possessed?"

I looked over at Calvin, panic suddenly rising in my stomach and making its way up into my chest. "How could you let them in here?"

I realized something- something horrible- "How can they even be _in_ here, I thought this place was warded against demons- unless _you—you're-"_

I stared up at Calvin as he stepped closer to the bed, his hands up in a placating gesture.

"Shh, Alyson, no-"

"ARE YOU _ALL_ DEMONS?!" I shrieked hoarsely. I got up in a crouch on the bed and held my hands up in front of me.

"Alyson-" the man wearing my father's meatsuit said in a helpless voice. He stepped closer to the bed and put one hand out. "Please-"

"DON'T TOUCH ME! _GET AWAY!"_ I yelled. "Exorcizamus te omnis immundus spiritus-" the words spilled out of my mouth unbidden, from somewhere deep inside of me.

"All right, let's all take a step back," Calvin said quickly. "John, you're upsetting her too much. Alyson, you need to calm down-"

I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned my head. It was the Dean meatsuit.

"Aly-" he began hesitantly.

I wrenched my shoulder out of his grasp. "NO!" I yelled. "DON'T YOU TOUCH ME!"

He looked hurt. But he put his hand down and stepped back from the bed.

And then I felt something in my head, calming, peaceful, and I saw an image of myself in a bucket swing, I was a toddler, and my fluffy blond hair was swaying in the breeze as a young Sam pushed me-

" _Aly, It's all right, you're safe,"_ he said in my head.

I looked up at Sam. He gave me a small smile, and I knew that _this_ wasn't a trick. His presence in my head was too real, too true, it was what I had felt when I had reached out him when I had been at Zeke's-

"Sammy-" my voice broke and I held my arms up to him just like I had done when I was that toddler. He came over to me and leaned down, putting his arms around me and pulling me into his embrace tightly.

"Shhh," he said as I began to cry harder.

"All right, all of y'all need to leave. Let's let her get calm for now." I heard Calvin say.

"But-" I heard Dean protest.

"Sam's got it," Calvin said. "Let him help her."

I heard footsteps walking out of the room, and Sam moved and sat down on the bed, facing me, and after a moment I crawled onto his lap and wrapped my arms even tighter around him.

" _Sammy, is it really you?"_ I asked, and then I realized I had said it in my head.

" _Yes, it's really me,"_ he replied calmly. _"You're safe now, we rescued you, and there are no demons here. I promise you."_

" _But- but Dad-"_ I started to feel panic again.

" _Shhhh, no, not right now. We'll talk about that later. You need to get calm."_ I felt his arms around my body, but he was also soothing me in my head, somehow, helping me to calm down and get focused. I relaxed, and rested my head on his chest.

"I missed your flannel," I said quietly, rubbing my face against the softness of his shirt.

I heard him chuckle in the back of his throat. "Yeah, that house you were in looked like they wouldn't even know what a flannel was," he said.

I heard a buzzing sound, and Sam pulled out his cell phone and looked at it.

"Calvin wants you to rest," he told me.

I looked up at him. "Will you stay here with me?" I asked him.

He looked down and me and smiled. "Of course I will," he said. He shifted me off of his lap, and then moved so that he was sitting propped up against the head of the bed.

He reached over to the little tray table that was next to the bed, and poured a glass of water from the small plastic pitcher that was there. He brought the cup up to my mouth.

"Drink," he said, and I held the cup and drank it all down. The cool water felt amazing on my sore, parched throat.

Sam turned and put the cup back on the table, then sat back.

"Snuggle up," he told me, and I curled up against his side as he put his arm around me.

I rested my head against his chest and felt his shirt under my cheek and smelled his Sam-smell, and oh God I had thought I would never smell that again, and I drifted into a sleep that was more relaxed than I had felt in a long time.

I woke up much later, with only a dim light on in the room. The bed was flat, and Sam was laying on the cot in the corner of the room. I had to pee, and I felt shaky.

I slowly sat up, feeling dizzy, and waited a moment for the dizziness to pass. I turned and swung my feet over the edge of the bed, and then stood up and took a couple of steps. A wave of dizziness overcame me, and I felt myself falling forward. I put my hands up to brace my fall, and fell with a loud splat on the cold linoleum. I felt a jerking sensation and then pain in my right arm, and I turned my head to see what was causing it. I had forgotten that I had an IV in, and the fall must have jerked it out of my arm, because I could see red slowly filling the clear tubing that came out of the place where it was taped to my arm. Blood-

I began to whimper wordlessly, feeling panic rising again. I reached for the tubing, trying to fiddle with it, and gasped as I felt a sharp pain in my arm. Then I panicked and yanked on it, and the end of the tube came out of the tape, and liquid and blood began to pour out of the tubing. Blood- I got a flash of the knife slicing into my arm, and watching with horror as my blood flowed into the bowl underneath-

"Oh geez, what's-" Sam was right there by my side, squatting down on the floor next to me. "Aly, what are you doing?"

"Blood-" I wheezed desperately, noticing that my breath was coming in short gasps.

"What happened?" he asked me, lifting up my arm and looking at it. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and I saw him pressing buttons, then he stood up and went into the bathroom, coming back with a towel. He squatted down again and wrapped the towel around my arm, putting pressure on it.

"Owwww," I whined.

"Alyson, breathe," he said firmly. "Slow deep breaths."

The door opened and Calvin hurried over. "What's goin' on," he asked, squinting down at us.

"I don't know, I woke up hearing her whimpering, and she's on the floor with the IV out and her arm is bleeding-"

"Hadda go pee," I wheezed. "Forgot about the IV."

Calvin stepped over to the IV bag and did something to it, and then bent and took my arm. "Come sit on the bed," he said. "I gotta look at this," he told me as he pulled me up.

He unwrapped the towel, and when I saw the blood, I gasped. Sam sat next to me, and he pulled my head over onto his chest. "Close your eyes," he told me. "Don't watch, take deep breaths. You're here with me, and you're safe."

I buried my face in his shirt, smelling his smell, and that helped me feel calmer. I whimpered as I felt pain in my arm, I didn't know what Calvin was doing, and I didn't want to look.

"Be right back," he murmured. I heard him walk away, and then in a moment there were sounds of paper tearing.

"Gonna take out the IV, gotta clean your arm. This'll be cold and sting a bit," he told me. I felt a pinch, and then he was wiping my arm with something cold and wet.

Sam put his hand on my head. "Steady breaths, that's good," he told me. "Keep it going."

I felt Calvin taping something to my arm. "All right, it's done." he said.

Sam let me go, and I turned my head. There was a white bandage taped to my arm now.

Calvin took the towel that Sam had wrapped around my arm and dropped it on the floor, to mop up the liquid that had come out of the IV tube.

"Think you can stand?" Calvin asked me. "I'll help ya to the toilet, and we gotta get you changed outta those wet clothes."

I looked down. I was wearing baggy hospital scrubs, and somehow the shirt and pants were wet from where the IV tubing had leaked, and there was a smear of blood on the leg as well.

I stood up, and felt myself weaving a little. Calvin put his arm around my waist, and began to walk me over to the bathroom. He walked me in and stood me before the toilet. I fumbled with the drawstring on the pants.

"I've gotta go see if I've got another set in your size," he told me.

"Don't leave!" I said, feeling scared.

"All right," he said. "I'll wait outside the door. Let me know if you need help getting up."

I sat down, and it felt like I peed for hours. After I was done, I pulled the scrub pants off and then stood up slowly. I grabbed the sink and turned it on with one hand, then washed my hands one at a time.

Someone knocked on the door, and I started, and cried out.

"You doin' okay?" Calvin called.

"Washing my hands," I replied. The door opened, and he came into the room. He put his arm around my waist, and walked me back over to the bed.

Sam walked into the room carrying something. He came over and handed it to me- it was one of his giant t-shirts, and one of his flannels.

"Here," he said. "You can wear this for now. We're going to have to go out and buy you some more clothes...you took most of yours with you."

Tears filled my eyes as I looked up at him. "Thank you," I whispered. I unfolded the shirt, and then tried to pull the scrub top off. My arms were shaky when I raised them, and I felt him helping me. He finished pulling the top off and then slipped his shirt over my head. He picked up the flannel shirt and helped me guide my arms into the sleeves like I was a little kid. I didn't mind it, I felt weak, and like I needed all the help I could get.

Calvin had gotten the pants out of the bathroom, and he picked up the shirt. "I'll get these laundered. We'll see how ya do tomorrow without the IV. I think you're ready to eat, but I'm not so sure about you leavin' the bed yet. You're still awful unsteady on your feet. I think you'll probably be in here a couple more days at least."

"Okay," I said. "Thank you."

"Y'all should go back to sleep for a while, it's the middle of the night."

Immediately I felt guilty. "Sorry for waking you," I said.

"It's all right, little lady," Calvin said. "That's what we're here for."

He left the room, and Sam turned to me. "Lay down," he told me.

"Sit with me," I begged him. "Don't leave."

"I'm not leaving," he said. I laid down, and he pulled the covers up and tucked me in, like he used to when I was little. I had missed being tucked in, even though I was a teenager and not a kid any more, and it was comforting. Tears filled my eyes as he sat down on the bed next to me and took my hand. I could smell his smell on his shirt, and feel the softness of his flannel on my skin, and that comforted me as much as feeling his hand holding mine.

I tried to sleep, but I still kept seeing the knife, and the blood. I was restless on the bed, trying to find a comfortable position.

" _What's going on?"_ Sam asked in my head.

" _When I saw the blood in the IV, it reminded me..."_ I told him, and then I showed him the memories of the rituals where they had bled me. I felt his anger, and pain, but I knew it wasn't directed at me.

" _I'm so sorry you went through that,"_ he said to me. _"Whatever they did made you very powerful."_

" _What do you mean?"_ I asked.

" _Do you remember when we were there, what happened before the angel came?"_

I tried to sift through my memories, but I couldn't get a hold on anything specific.

" _No,"_ I told him.

He showed me his memory then, of a glowing being on the altar, breaking the bonds, and the stone cracking in half with a loud sound, and then the being rising up and raising her hand and exorcising demons left and right-

" _That was you,"_ he told me.

" _It was?"_

" _Yes,"_ he said. _"It was one of the most kick-ass things I've ever seen in my life, and it_ _was my baby sister."_ I felt the awe and pride he felt for me, and it made me feel good.

" _I know you went through a horrible time, but you helped save us. Don't ever forget that."_ I felt him hugging me in my mind, and then I felt his arms around my body, and I turned to him and put my arm around him and snuggled into his chest, and I was finally able to relax and go to sleep.

I woke up as Calvin was bustling in with a tray of food. Whatever was on there smelled heavenly.

Sam had been sitting in the armchair with his eyes closed, and he opened them when Calvin came into the room. He stood up and walked over to the bed, pressing the button on the side so that my head was raised.

Calvin pulled the tray table over and put a plate down- it had scrambled eggs, cut up strawberries, and a bowl of oatmeal.

He had another plate that also had bacon and toast on it, and he handed that plate to Sam.

"No fair," I said.

Calvin and Sam looked at me, both with raised eyebrows.

"I want bacon too!" I protested.

"Let's see how ya do with what's on your plate first," Calvin said.

Someone cleared their throat. I turned my head- Dean stood in the doorway, holding two large mugs of coffee. He came into the room, and looked at Sam.

"Brought you some caffeine," he said. He handed Sam one of the mugs, and then turned to me.

"Is it, uh, okay that I'm in here?" he asked gruffly, unable to meet my eyes.

I felt a little nervous. "Um, sure," I said. I glanced up at him and then at Calvin, who was watching me.

Calvin looked at my brothers. "Y'all be careful with what ya talk about, go slow. Don't want you upsetting her too much. I'll be back in a while to look ya over." He left the room.

I pulled the tray table over to me, and sat up more. Dean walked over near Sam and leaned on the wall.

"How are you feeling today?" he asked with a forced casualness.

"Uh, okay I guess." I mumbled. I picked up the fork and speared a piece of scrambled egg with it, then brought it to my mouth. My hand was shaking, and the egg fell off and into my lap. I gave a little gasp.

"You okay?" Dean asked with concern.

"Fine," I said. I picked the egg up with my fingers and ate it. I tried again, and managed to maneuver that piece of egg into my mouth. The third try made me frustrated, the egg kept slipping off of the fork.

"Do you want a break, Sam?" Dean asked. "I thought I could, uh, be in here if you want to go take a shower or something."

"It's up to Aly," Sam said.

I had put the fork down and picked up the spoon instead, and scooped up some oatmeal. Again, my hand shook, and the oatmeal slopped off of the spoon and onto the blanket in my lap.

"Dammit!" I hissed, tears of frustration coming to my eyes. I picked up the blob of oatmeal and threw it onto the tray, then wiped my hand.

Dean came over to the bed quickly. "Do you want some help?" he asked.

"No!" I covered my face with my hands. "Just- leave me alone!"

I heard him exhale. After a moment I put my hands down, blinked back the tears, pulled the tray closer, and bent my head down so that it was right over the bowl. I scooped some oatmeal into my mouth like that, not caring if I looked like I was an animal bending over a watering hole. I ate a couple spoonfuls of oatmeal and then sat back, pushing the tray away.

Sam and Dean were both watching me.

"You okay?" Sam asked.

"Yeah, I'm just...full now. And tired." I said. I turned over, facing away from them, and closed my eyes to rest.

I could hear Sam eating for a few minutes. Then Dean said quietly, "She talk about anything yet?"

No," Sam answered just as quietly, "Last night she tried to get out of bed and fell, yanked her IV out. I had to 911 Calvin, her arm was bleeding."

"Why'd she get out of bed?"

"She had to go to the bathroom."

"Think we should try and get her to talk?" Dean sounded hopeful.

"Calvin said not to push anything, remember?" Sam said.

"I don't get why she's—acting like this, Sam. She'll barely look at me!"

"I think she's still...unsure of things. She's still going on the last things she remembers."

"Well, she needs to remember more! We're her family, not a bunch of demons who are out to get her!" The frustration was evident in Dean's voice.

I turned my head slightly. "Trying to rest here!" I said loudly. "Can you stop talking?"

I heard Dean exhale again. "Fine," he said. "I'll be back later."

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

Calvin put the otoscope and stethoscope back into the black bag, and looked at me. "Lookin' good, little lady," he said. "Once you get more steady, we'll get you out of this bed and set up in a bedroom again. You want to try to walk to the bathroom on your own?"

I stood up and got out of bed, feeling a little wobbly, but after a couple of steps my legs started to give out, and Sam rushed over to grab me and hold me up. He walked me into the bathroom.

"Let me know if you need more help," he said, closing the door behind him as he left.

I could hear him and Calvin talking, but I couldn't make out what they were saying.

After I was done, I was able to get up and stand at the sink to wash my hands, and then shuffle to the door. I opened it and stood there as a wave of dizziness came over me, and grabbed at the door knob.

Sam hurried over and put his arm around my waist, and walked me back to bed. I got in bed, and Calvin picked up his doctor bag.

"Lunch will be ready shortly," he told us. "Text me if ya need anythin' in the meantime."

He turned and left the room.

I heard voices in the hallway.

"How's she doing?" I recognized the low rumble of my father's voice. I heard Calvin answer him, and then their voices moved away as they walked away from the door. I felt a pang at that moment- I wanted to see him, to talk to him and beg his forgiveness for everything, but I still wasn't sure-

"Sam," I whispered.

He turned his head away from the t.v., which he must have turned on when I was in the bathroom. "What?" he asked.

"If Dad- I mean, if I talk to him- Sam, I did some really bad things-"

He turned his body, giving me his full attention. "Like what, honey?"

"I-I-" tears filled my eyes, and I bowed my head. "I was staying with this father and daughter, they rescued me from this guy at this truck stop, you know? And they were really nice to me." I glanced up at him from the corner of my eye, but I saw no judgement from him. Yet.

I gripped the blanket in my hands and bunched it up. "They had such a different lifestyle, they had a lot of money, and they got me whatever I wanted- and Zeke, he was so understanding and kind, and I –- I-" the tears spilled over.

Sam just waited silently.

I wiped my cheek with a shaking hand and took a deep breath. "Meg started calling me her sister and I loved that, 'cause I never had a sister before, y' know, and she showed me how to put on makeup and fix my hair-" the words tumbled out in a rush- "and Zeke, he let us do whatever we wanted, and he talked to me and listened, and I- I- I started calling him Dad."

I closed my eyes, waiting for Sam to get angry at me, to tell me how horrible I was, that it was a huge betrayal of our father, of our family.

He didn't say anything. After several moments, I opened my eyes and looked up at him. He was just sitting there watching me. He reached over and took one of my hands that was still clenched in the blanket.

"It's understandable, Aly," he said quietly. "It sounds like he gave you something that...unfortunately, that Dad didn't give you. And I can see why you did it."

"But- but they were demons!" I burst out, lifting my head and looking at him. "They were demons, and I couldn't even tell! I was living in a house _full_ of them, Sam! And I had _no_ idea! I'm so _fucking_ stupid!" I raised my fist to my head and struck my temple. "I know that all Dad's been doing all these years is hunting demons, hunting down the one who killed Mom, and then it turns out that I'm _living_ with him and calling him Dad! Isn't that, like, the _biggest_ betrayal ever?"

Sam grabbed my fist and pulled it away from my head.

"First off, I don't want to hear you _ever_ calling yourself fucking stupid ever again, you hear me?" he asked sternly. "And don't you _dare_ hit yourself again. I understand why you feel bad. But I also understand why you did it. And no, you can't blame yourself fully for how things went. Part of the blame, if you want to call it that, falls squarely on Dad's shoulders, because he hid so much from you, and didn't make you aware of what was out there. And he knows this, Aly, he's well aware of how he screwed up."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, think about it. If he had been honest with you from the get-go, and told you everything about Azazel, and had taught you how to defend yourself, do you think that it would have gone the way it did? He kept you in the dark, and so most of the blame of all this, if you really want to apportion blame, lays on his shoulders, not yours."

I bowed my head again. "You- you don't think he's going to be upset?"

Sam shifted in the chair. "Well, sure, he's probably going to be a little upset and maybe hurt. But like I said, he's aware of how much of this is because he was trying to protect you, and how wrong that was. So he can't really blame you for the way things went."

"I called a demon 'Dad', Sam." I whispered hoarsely. "I called the demon who killed our Mom, 'Dad'!" I looked up at him, feeling desperate.

"Honey..." he put his hand up and cupped my cheek. "You're going to have to forgive yourself for that. You didn't know. They tricked you in the worst way possible. That's what demons do, they get into your head and find out all your weaknesses, and exploit them, and that's what they did. And that's _not_ your fault."

Sam put his hand on the back of my neck and gently pulled my head forward, leaning to me so that our foreheads were touching. He looked me in the eyes earnestly.

"All right?"

I sighed. "All right, Sammy." I said.

He let me go and sat back. "It's going to take a while, I know, and it's going to be a little rough. But we can all do this. We're Winchesters, and we're a strong bunch." He took my hand again. "And don't forget, you're a Winchester too. Even after everything you just went through, and you never stopped being one. And it's what got you through it." he smiled at me.

"Do you- do you think he'd want to talk to me about this?" I asked timidly.

"That's all he's wanted since we got here, Aly, is talk to you and be with you and hold you. He's been keeping his distance because Calvin said we shouldn't upset you too much. But if you think you're ready-"

I ducked my head. "Do you- do you think you could tell him, Sam?"

"No, I think you need to be the one to tell him." Sam said.

"Will you- will you be here with me?" I asked.

"Of course." he said, smiling again.

I took another deep breath. "Tell me," I said. "About the rescue. Was there really an angel there?"

Sam got up from his chair and walked over the the bed, sitting down and facing me. "I'll do you one better," he said, "I'll show you."

He took my hands in his. "Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax," he instructed. "Clear your mind, try to make it blank."

I did what he said, lowering my head. Images began to filter into my mind, my brothers and father and Bobby fighting the demons, then seeing myself rise up off of the altar—which still amazed me, and I almost couldn't believe it. I saw Dad lift up The Colt, even though he was in obvious pain, and shoot the bullet that killed Azazael. I started to feel panicky, and so Sam sent another image into my mind. The dark-haired man in the trench coat.

I watched as Sam showed me how he healed everyone, even me. I saw his wings extend out and the flash of light before he disappeared. I saw how upset Dean had gotten when talking to the angel about me- and that it was coming from a place of protectiveness- and how he held me in the back seat of the car as they drove away.

I finally understood that there were no demons here, just my family, and all they wanted was for us to be together again. It was as if something opened in my mind and a cascade of images from the past fell in, Dean giving me a piggy-back ride, Dean holding my hand at the zoo, Dean guiding me across the monkey bars on a playground, Dean letting me fall asleep curled in his lap.

I opened my eyes and noticed that tears were streaming down my face, and let go of Sam's hands.

"Dean," I said. "I want Dean."

Sam looked at me and smiled. He pulled out his cell phone and texted someone.

A couple of minutes later, we heard quick footsteps in the hallway, and then Dean was in the room, and he looked at me cautiously. I held my arms out to him, and he grabbed me up in a hug.

"Oh, Aly, sweetheart," he said, and his voice was choked with emotion. He sat down on the bed facing me, and I wrapped my arms around him. We sat together for a long time, and I could feel him stroking my hair. It felt so good to be held by him again, I had missed this so much. Now I was back with my family, which was all that mattered. Hopefully they wouldn't hold what I had done against me.

He finally pulled back and looked at me, his clear green eyes flicking back and forth between mine. "You're gonna be okay," he told me. "Whatever happened to you, you're gonna be okay. You're safe now, and we're not gonna let anything happen to you...and we're here to help." His voice was gruff.

I looked at him and said, "Okay Dean."

He blinked, and then he smiled, and tears came to his eyes. He pulled me into another hug. "I've been waiting to hear you say that," he murmured, almost to himself.

"What? Why?" I asked.

"Nothing," he mumbled. He let me go, sat back, and rubbed his hand over his face. Then he looked at me. "I'm so glad we got you back, and you're awake now."

"How long was I out for?" I asked.

"Almost two weeks," Dean told me. "No one could tell us when you were gonna wake up, either. "

"I was...so tired," I said.

"The angel said your soul needed time to heal," Sam said.

"He _really_ was an angel?" I still had trouble believing that the man in the trench coat had been an angel.

"Yeah, and he got rid of the majority of the demons, and then healed all of us. How much do you remember?" Dean looked at me.

I shook my head. "I don't- it's just a lot of images and stuff right now."

"Don't push her," Sam said. "I shared some memories with her, and that was enough for now."

"Well, when _are_ we gonna talk this through?" Dean demanded. "We've all been sitting around waiting...and Dad's been on tenterhooks not knowing how Aly's going to react to him."

My eyes filled with tears. "I can't." I bowed my head.

"Can't what?" Dean asked.

"Can't—face him yet."

"Why not, Aly?" Dean asked. "Why not?"

I looked up at him. "Because I've done so much bad stuff, I know I'm in a lot of trouble, and I'm- I'm a bad daughter."

"Okay, yeah, you ran away and all that, and that will need to be addressed in the future, but what do you mean you're a bad daughter?" Dean was frowning with confusion now.

I grabbed the blanket in my hands again and bunched it up. "I-I was living with this guy and his daughter, they rescued me from a guy who was trying to steal my money, and they were really nice- but they were demons! And I had started to- started to think of them as my family, and call them my sister, and Dad!" I started to cry, and curled up in a ball.

"Well, demons get into your head and all that, and they trick you, you know? And that's what they did."

"But Dean, it was _him!_ The one who killed Mom! I was living with him, and I – I forgot about you guys, and I was calling him Dad!" I turned my head to look at him.

"What do you mean you forgot about us?" Sam asked, and there was an urgency underneath the calmness in his voice.

"I just- for a while I totally forgot, about all of you, and my life before...but Meg told me, she said that she'd had some witches making a spell to make me forget, and she was putting stuff in the coffee that we had every morning."

I looked up at them. "I _forgot_ about you guys! And I was _totally_ into that life!"

Dean looked angry. "You can't blame yourself for that," he said. "They were using magic on you, that's not your fault."

"But—but-"

"And Dad knows, Aly. He knows that he messed up with you, okay? And he wants to try to change. We all need to, uh, try to change, you know?"

He cleared his throat and looked over at Sam.

"Hey, uh, Sam, could you give us a few minutes? I want to talk to Aly about something." He looked at me. "Is that okay with you?" he asked.

Sam stood up and looked at me with raised eyebrows.

"Uh... I guess," I said, feeling uncertain.

"Don't worry, I'm not gonna yell at you or anything." Dean said.

"I'll be outside," Sam told me, and he pocketed his cell phone and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him.

"What is it?" I asked Dean, feeling apprehensive now that we were alone.

Dean leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together. He looked at the floor for a long moment with his head down. Then he lifted his head and looked at me.

"So," he said, "Last time we were together, you, uh, the last thing you said to me... was that you hated me." He was clearly uncomfortable. He looked at my face briefly and then down again.

"I'm sorry, Dean," I said quietly. "I don't hate you. I didn't hate you."

He looked up at me again. "You sure? 'Cause the way I was treating you those last couple of days sure gave you a reason to feel that way." He stared down at his folded hands.

"I _was_ upset with you," I told him. "And I _was_ hurt by the way you guys were treating me. But I could _never_ hate you, Dean."

He let out a long breath and then sat up. "Good," he said with relief in his voice. "That's been weighing on my mind this whole time." He gave me a small smile, but I could tell he still felt uncomfortable. "Listen, can we, uh, talk about everything...I mean, can you tell us what happened? From the beginning?"

"I—I already told you some of it," I said. "Can't that be enough for now?"

He leaned forward again. "Aly, we _do_ need to know everything. We need to know what all they did to you, and what they told you, because others are looking for you, and we need to be ready." His voice was urgent.

"Wha- what do you mean, others are looking for me? What do you mean we need to be ready?" I stared at him, fear rising in my stomach. "Are they going to kidnap me again?" Suddenly I remembered seeing Meg's spirit leaving her body. I had loved her like a sister—and I had thought she loved me, but she had looked at me with such hatred right before she escaped-

"Oh no, Meg is out there!" I shrieked, in a panic now. "She- she hates me, she'll want to kill me! What am I supposed to do!"

The door opened and Sam came walking into the room quickly, right up to the side of the bed.

"What's going on?" Sam looked from me to Dean.

"I just asked her to talk about-" Dean began, in a defensive voice.

"They're going to come after me!" I screamed at Sam. "They're going to take me away again!"

" _Damn it!"_ Sam swore, glaring at Dean. "Didn't we already talk about not rushing her, more than once? What the hell is _wrong_ with you, man?"

"Sam, I didn't-"

Sam cut Dean off. "Go, just go." He waved his hand at Dean, who looked guilty.

"Alyson, I'm sor-"

" _Did you hear what I said?"_ Sam yelled. "Get the fuck _out_ of here, man!"

I cringed at how loud and angry Sam's voice sounded.

Dean turned and walked out of the room, and I heard voices in the hallway.

"-all the screaming?"

"-she okay?"

The door opened and I heard Calvin's voice. "What's goin' on?"

"She got upset, I'm dealing with it," Sam called over his shoulder.

He reached out to me and put his hands on my shoulders. "Breathe, Aly," he said.

I looked up at him, tears welling in my eyes. "You- you're not mad at me?"

"No, why would I be mad at you?" he asked calmly.

"You were just yelling at Dean-"

"Because I _am_ upset with him." Sam said firmly. _"Him,_ not you." He sat down on the bed and put his arms around me. "Calm down, breathe. No-one is going to take you away from here, all right? You're safe."

"But Dean said that there are others looking for me, and that we need to be ready, and I-I remembered that Meg got away!" I pulled back and looked up at him.

"Dammit!" Sam swore under his breath. I flinched, and he tried to hug me again, but I was stiff and tense now.

"Aly, all I can tell you is that you're safe here. Calvin's place is well protected and we check everything every day, okay? Can you trust that?" He looked into my eyes earnestly.

"Okay, Sam, I'll try," I said. I still felt scared and agitated.

He put his hand on my back and began to rub it. At the same time, he said, _"It's all_ _right, calm down,"_ in my mind. _"Be calm, deep breath,"_ he said. I could feel him soothing me, and I tried to take deep, slow breaths, and eventually I did feel relaxed.

I laid back on the bed, and closed my eyes, and suddenly it was like I fell down a rabbit hole of exhaustion, and I slept.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam tried not to stomp- he was angry, and he didn't want to alert Aly to the fact that he was leaving her room, or the men that he was on his way into the kitchen.

He walked heavily right up to Dean, who was standing next to the counter, drinking coffee.

"What. The. _Hell_ , Dean!" He ground out. "After both Calvin _and_ I tell you not to push her, you do anyway! _Why?"_

There was a half-empty mug on the counter and it slid all the way to the end and stopped. Everyone stared at it.

Sam sighed and put his hand to his head. "Sorry, that was me. I lose control a little bit when I'm upset." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Where is she?" Calvin asked with concern.

"She conked out after I got her calmed down. She falls asleep really fast and sleeps really heavily, thank God." Sam looked over at Calvin as he spoke, then focused his attention back on Dean, who had put his mug on the counter and straightened up in the face of Sam's anger.

"Sam, time is of the essence here- we need to find out what happened to her, so that we can start-"

"How can we find out what happened to her when she barely remembers anything?" Sam said angrily. "Whatever the hell she went through, it was _so_ traumatic that she's- it's like she's got PTSD or something now! And pressuring her to talk about it and remember things is only going to make her _worse_ , not better!"

The cabinet door next to his head opened a couple of inches and then slammed shut.

"Sorry," he muttered, and everyone acted like nothing had happened.

"And ya know, we don't know if her usin' those powers might've, I don't know, done somethin' to her." Bobby piped up.

Dean turned to him. "You mean like brain damage? I _refuse_ to believe that she's brain damaged, for crap's sake!" He glared at Bobby. "How can you even _suggest_ such a thing!"

John had come into the room just then. "Dean, I know you want everything to be back to normal, but you have to realize, it's not going to be. Things are going to be different while she's recovering, and then...I don't even know if it would be good for her if things went back to the way they were before...before all of this happened. It wasn't- the way we lived wasn't very, you know, stable."

Dean exhaled in frustration. "Fine, all of you, gang up on me. You want to tell me how shitty and selfish I'm being? Or I'll give you a better idea- you can call Missouri and tattle on me!" He glared at Sam, and then walked around him and out of the room.

"Idjit," Bobby muttered, shaking his head. "John, just let him go for now. He needs to think things through and come to the realization that he's being a jackass all on his own. Any one of us tellin' him any more is just gonna put his back up even further."

"Mr. Singer, you have a way with words," John said, grinning at him.

"Well, I just call things as I see 'em," Bobby grinned back at John. "And that boy is being a first- class jackass idjit right about now. He'll come 'round."

"How's she doing, Sam?" John asked.

"She's shaky on her feet, and she's still unsure about things." Sam said. He looked at Calvin. "Do you agree with my assessment of her emotional state?"

Calvin shifted, and nodded. "I ain't no psychologist or nothin', but I've seen enough behaviors from people, after goin' though all kinds of hell, and yeah, I agree with ya. We don't know if she was actually kidnapped and held against her will that whole time, but we know that at the end she most certainly was, and she thought she was gonna die, and she was tortured...and those are all criteria for developing it. So we're gonna have to be extra gentle with her."

John sighed. "I understand. It's just hard, I've waited so long, and she's right down the hall, and I can't even go in and hug her." He looked sad.

"Give her a little while longer, Dad, she's coming around. I think she finally trusts that we are really her family, and not possessed or anything, now. She asked for Dean earlier, before things...went sideways." Sam said. "I'd better go check on her."

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

I woke up hearing familiar clicking. I couldn't figure out what it was, and then I opened my eyes. Sam was sitting in the armchair, his lap top on the tray table, focused on the screen and typing away. I didn't think that seeing my brother on his laptop would make me cry, but I felt tears in my eyes and all of a sudden they were sliding down my face.

"Sammy," I said.

"Hmm," he said distractedly, and glanced up at me. Then he noticed I was crying, and stopped what he was doing. "What's up? Why the tears?"

He stood up and walked over to me, and sat on the bed. I sat forward and hugged him, and he put his arms around me.

"Just- this is so- familiar," I said. "You on your laptop and all."

He chuckled. "I know what you mean, it felt like it was back the way it used to be for a second there, for me too."

I let go of him and pulled back. "Is- is Dean mad at me? For not talking?" I asked hesitantly.

"No, Aly, he's not. And you don't worry about that- you're on your schedule, not somone else's. You talk when you're ready."

"But- he said I need to tell you everything so that we can be-"

"Well, Dean's in ultra-hunter mode right now. He feels powerless so he wants to get out there and hunt and feel like he's doing something. He needs to just chill out and relax." Sam said.

"And that's my fault too." I said, looking down at the bed.

"Would you stop that?" Sam asked sternly. "Stop blaming yourself for everything!" He took my chin in his hand and tilted my face up so that I was looking at him.

"From the moment you left, all we've wanted was to find you. Not to yell at you or blame you or punish you, but just to get you out of the clutches of that bastard's hands and get you back and safe. And we've done that now, and that's all that matters." He hugged me again, tightly, and then let me go.

"Okay, Sam," I said.

The door opened, and Calvin walked in with a tray. "Got some lunch for ya," he said. "Bobby made some of his stick- to-your- ribs stew."

"Great," Sam said. "I'm so glad Bobby took over the cooking for a while."

"Dad's been subjecting everyone to his 'one-pan specials'?" I asked with a grin. Dad's unsophisticated taste buds were kind of a joke, he was a meat and potatoes kind of guy to begin with, and then being in the military and having to eat whatever you had on hand didn't help him any. Somehow I had learned to cook well on my own, despite growing up with his cooking.

"Unfortunately, yes," Sam grinned back at me. "and we've got to get you out of this bed as soon as possible, and cooking again, so that we can eat some decent meals."

Sam took a bowl and went back over to the armchair, and Calvin put the tray on the little table and moved it in front of me. There was a bowl of stew and a thick slice of French bread next to it.

"Let me know if ya need anything else, all right?" Calvin asked, and then left the room.

I scooped up a spoonful of stew, and noticed my hand was shaking again as I tried to bring it up to my mouth. The liquid dripped off of the spoon onto the tray, and I made a frustrated noise in my throat.

I tried again, and the same things happened. I got so frustrated that I wanted to throw the spoon across the room, but I didn't. I sighed and closed my eyes for a moment, and then when I opened them, Sam was watching me.

"You want some help?" he asked me. He gestured at me, holding up his spoon.

I looked at him. "Help how? You mean feed me? No, that's- how embarrasssing!"

"Aly, I fed you before," he said gently.

"Yeah, when I was a baby! I'm not a baby any more!" I covered my face with my hand for a moment. "Just leave me alone!" I snapped.

I took a deep breath and put my hand down, then I looked at Sam again. He was still watching me.

"Sorry," I muttered.

"It's okay to accept help, you know," he said quietly. "That's all I'm going to say."

I bent my head over the bowl, and settled for scooping up the chunks of chicken and veggies that were in the stew, and draining the liquid off the spoon before I brought it up to my mouth. I ate several spoonfuls that way and half the piece of bread. I wanted to eat more, but I was full. I sat back and pushed the tray table away.

"Sam," I said suddenly, "I'm sorry I was so awful to you...before. I'm sorry about the home-schooling stuff and I'm sorry I was a bitch to you afterwards. If you want to do home-schooling again, I promise I'll do whatever you want, and I won't be rude or sassy, and I'll do my best and I won't slack off-"

He held his hand up. "Shh, Aly." he said. He put his spoon down and looked at me. "I'm the one who needs to apologize to you. I was- was too hard on you, and I drove you away because of it."

"My brattiness didn't help."I said.

He shook his head. "No, I need for you to listen. I need to explain something to you. That month or so that I went to college, remember? I was really happy, because I was going to have a normal life, but then I got... pulled back into this. Stop-" he looked at me sternly, when I started to say something.

"I'm _not_ blaming you. I know that I'm a hunter and a researcher; Dad trained me to do those things and I'm good at them. When I came back, I _was_ a little frustrated at first. I wanted to be out of the life, but I realized I couldn't be, because you needed me, and as it turns out Dad needed my help too. We know that you don't have skills to be a hunter- and I'm _not_ saying that as an insult, listen-" he said, as I bristled indignantly for a moment-"but _you_ out of all of us have the most chance of getting out and going to college and leading a normal life. I felt like-like you didn't realize this, and you were just blowing school off and being a typical teenager, when you should be taking this really seriously because it was your ticket away from all the hunting and craziness. I wanted that for myself and I transferred it onto you, and when you didn't react the same way I did, I got angry. And I was hurt too, because you're really smart and talented, and I felt like after all the encouragement and all the teaching I've done with you over the years, for you not to recognize that, and just blow off school work was like a slap in the face. I didn't think that you could be acting that way because maybe you felt bad about yourself. I made it all about me, and I'm sorry."

He looked down at the floor for a moment, and when he looked up at me there were tears in his eyes. "I know that what I did and how I treated you really hurt you, and I'm really, really sorry for that. I don't—I don't want it to have ruined our relationship." He had a cautious look in his eyes.

My eyes filled with tears. "Sammy," I said. "I didn't know all of that. I feel bad that you had such a rough time."

He chuckled mirthlessly. "How could you know, when I didn't even know myself? I'm a Winchester, and Winchester men don't talk about feelings. I've only just recently come to realize all of this stuff on my own."

"Well, you didn't ruin our relationship." I said. "If anything, I messed things up, because I kept being obnoxious and pushing your buttons, and I don't even know why I was doing it-" I sniffled so that I didn't start crying. "I'm sorry, Sam! I was hurting, but then I was trying to hurt you, and that was wrong!"

"Aly, I understand why you did what you did." he said patiently. He got up and sat on the edge of the bed, lifting his hand to my face slowly and brushing my hair back from my face.

He looked me in the eyes. "I'm trying to apologize. Let me do that instead of blaming yourself!"

I blinked back tears and took a deep breath. "Okay." I said.

"I spent the whole time worrying that you were- that you hated me and would never want to see me or speak to me again, and then when you started sending me images, it was just-" he sighed. "I was so scared and worried for you, but the fact that you were reaching out to me made me feel good, you know? And then when it stopped, and Missouri and I couldn't figure out why, that was even more worrying."

"Where did my powers go?" I asked. "I'm not even having headaches any more."

He looked at me. "The angel said that they're blocking them. They were blocking them before, so that you couldn't be...used. Do you remember talking to him about it?"

I shook my head.

"Don't think about it too much, it'll come back when it's ready." he told me.

"Okay," I yawned. "I think I'm ready for a nap." I sat back in the bed.

Sam stood up and chuckled. "It's like you're a little kid again, but this time around you don't mind taking naps. Remember how much you used to hate them?" he grinned at me.

"Sortof." I said.

He took my bowl and the tray. "I'm going to take these to the kitchen."

"Come right back," I murmured. I didn't want to be alone, and I wanted to wait until he came back, but I couldn't help it, I fell asleep again.

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

Dean came into the room carrying some brightly colored plastic shopping bags.

"Sammy reminded me that you don't have a lot of clothes, so I went out and got you some stuff," he said gruffly. "Hope that's okay."

He set the bags on the bed next to me. I guessed that this was his way of apologizing for pushing me and upsetting me before.

I looked up at him. "You didn't have to do that-" I said hesitantly.

"Yeah, I did," he said. "I went through what was in your duffle and it's mostly out of season right now, and some of it was looking kinda threadbare. And I remembered you saying... before, that some of your stuff was getting too small."

He glanced at me, and I could see that he was worried.

"Okay," I said. "It's fine," I said, trying to be agreeable.

Dean waited a moment. "Aren't you gonna look at it and check it out, make sure you like it? I've got the reciepts in case you don't like it or it doesn't fit, I can take it back."

"I'm sure it's fine," I said.

Sam came over to the bed and took one of the bags. "Let's look at what he got," he said. He pulled a couple of things out and unfolded them. There were three pairs of yoga pants with drawstring waists, and three matching hoodies, all in bright colors.

"These are pretty," Sam said, looking at me. "Do you like them?"

"Uh, sure, I guess," I said.

"The salewoman told me that, uh, girls your age are still wearing the yoga stuff, and I told her that you've lost weight due to an illness, so she suggested the drawstring." Dean said. "Hope it's okay."

I smiled at him.

Sam pulled stuff out of another bag. Three pairs of jeans and two pretty patterned blouses, and a stack of t-shirts.

"I couldn't resist," Dean said with a grin, and then I understood what he meant. They were all shirts emblazoned with band logos- there were two Beatles shirts- one with the Beatles cartoon image of the Yellow Submarine, and the characters from the movie, and the other one had their logo and said, "All You Need is Love"; there was a Led Zeppelin shirt, a Kansas t-shirt, and an AC/DC shirt.

"Now maybe you'll stop raiding our bureaus for t-shirts," Dean smiled at me. It was a long time joke, since I had loved to wear their big t-shirts to bed ever since I was a little kid.

"But I like wearing your shirts!" I said.

"I know, I'm just teasing you, kiddo," he said, and he reached out to ruffle my hair.

I flinched as his hand came towards me, and then I felt guilty when I saw how upset he looked.

"Uh, sorry," he said. And put his hand down.

"No, I'm sorry," I said.

"You don't have anything to be sorry about," he said gruffly.

"Thanks for the clothes, Dean," I said sincerely, and I held my arms out to him.

He carefully stepped into my embrace and then hugged me tightly. When we let go, he stood up and reached into his coat pocket.

"One more thing," he said. He held out a chocolate bar. "I did check with Calvin, he said it's okay for you to have." he told me with a grin.

Tears came to my eyes. "Just like old times," I said with a little laugh. "Thanks, Dean."

He smiled down at me, and it looked like he had tears in his eyes too. "You're welcome, short stuff," he said.

"You want to try some of this on, and make sure it fits?" Sam asked me.

"Uh, I guess."

Sam stood up, and he and Dean started to walk out of the room.

"Where are you going?" I asked anxiously.

"We'll wait outside while you try the clothes on," Sam said.

"But- I don't care if you're here!" I said desperately. "Don't leave!"

Sam turned back to me. "What's wrong?"

"I don't want- I don't like being alone!" I burst out. "Don't leave!" I repeated.

"I'm not leaving. I'll be right there in the hallway." he said.

Tears came to my eyes. "Sam, no!" I said. I felt like a petulant child. "I don't want you to go!" And wow, now I was whining like a child.

He hesitated. "All right, I'll stay...I'll, uh, turn away while you're changing, okay?"

I exhaled, and wiped my eyes. "Okay. Thanks."

"I'll be back later," Dean said. He was more shy about being around me and anything remotely "girly" nowadays. Dean was uncomfortable talking about bras and make up and all of that. I had never had any issues with Sam helping me get dressed or anything, as he didn't seem to feel the same way that Dean did, and I had felt more at ease with Sam about all of those issues.

Sam grabbed his laptop and sat down on the bench sideways, so that he was facing partway away from me. He put his laptop on his lap and focused on that.

The shirts fit me, they were a little loose, and the yoga pants and hoodies were soft and comfortable. By the time I had tried on the jeans I was tired out from all the moving around. I tossed the pants onto the bed. "All done," I said. "I never realized how tiring it is to get dressed over and over."

He turned to me. "You're still recovering, still getting your strength back." He stood up and came over to the bed, and started to put the clothes back in the bags.

"I'll get these washed tonight so you can wear them tomorrow." he said.

"Thanks," I said.

Calvin came in to check me over. "Lookin' good, as usual." he said. "Are ya able to walk to the bathroom by yourself yet?"

"Not yet." I replied.

"We should start havin' you take short walks up and down the hallway to get your muscles goin'. Someone'll be next to you, it'll be a little exercise, and that'll help."

"Okay." I said.

"I'll bring you dinner in a little bit, are you hungry?"

"No, I want to rest." I said, yawning. "I'm tired now."

"All right, Sam can let me know when you're hungry," he said.

I laid down and closed my eyes again. It seemed like I was a little kid again, and all I did was eat and sleep these days. Hopefully that would change soon.

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

Dean came into the kitchen holding a lap top, and walked over to where Sam and John were sitting at the table, finishing a late dinner while Aly slept. She had still been tired, had eaten a small dinner, and fallen back to sleep for the night.

"I think I found a lead on Meg," he said, setting the computer down.

"You did?" John moved the computer so that both he and Sam could read the screen.

"Brookings isn't too far away from here," Dean looked at John. "We could get on the road tonight." True to form, Dean had not said anything to any of them about the earlier confrontation they had had, and no one had brought any of it up. No one was willing to open that particular can of worms again right now.

"All right, now hold on," Bobby said, walking over to them from where he had been standing at the counter. All three of them turned to look at him. He took his cap off and resettled it on his head.

"Aly needs you here, not out there searchin' for demons,"

"Yeah, but this is a line on that bitch who betrayed her," Dean said.

Bobby sighed angrily and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, as if to say, 'Heaven help me'. "You Winchester men may be smart, but y'all are the _biggest_ bunch of idjits," he said. "Listen to me. That little girl in that hospital bed needs you here, _all of you_. She needs some normalcy in her life right now, Dad and brothers home with her, eating dinner together and watchin' a movie with popcorn and doing chores and who knows what all else. What she _don't_ need is the three a' you leavin' her again, high and dry like ya used to, with people who ain't her family. She needs stability right now. The demons are _always_ gonna be out there, hunting can wait for a while."

He looked right at John. "Your little girl needs you, she needs this to help her heal. What were we talkin' about before with Calvin? She's more 'n likely got PTSD and she don't need people runnin' off right now."

Bobby looked then at Sam and Dean. "She needs her dad to be her dad and her brothers to be her brothers. Can y'all let the hunting go for a little bit and just focus on her for a while? 'Cause quite honestly, I think if y'all go off and leave her again, the same kinda thing will be bound to happen, who knows if it'll be in a month or a year or 5 years, but when and if it does, it ain't gonna be pretty, and you'll lose her for good. And really, I can't say as I want to be around for it if it happens."

John looked at Bobby. "Well... I guess you're right." he said slowly.

"Course I'm right, you damn fool," Bobby said with agitation. "You said before that things was gonna change when you got her back, and this is the first step in making that change, ain't it? Admitting that you're a damn fool, and trying to step up and not be such a idjit for your kid."

"You're right, Bobby," Dean said. "You're absolutely right." He sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. "I'm exhausted...and I'm operating on instinct, and my instinct is to go out and find and gank these sons of bitches. They hurt my family, and I want to hurt them right back."

"Well don't ya think if you're exhausted, that's another reason to stay here awhile? An exhausted hunter makes mistakes, the kinds of mistakes that get themselves killed!" Bobby shook his head and muttered, "Idjit."

"So what do we do?" John asked. "Just sit back and let them go on their merry way for now? When God knows what else they're doing?"

Bobby turned on his old friend. "What's more important, John- your only daughter's health and well-being, or ridding the world of a couple more supernatural fuglies? Ya know, it's easy to be out there, stabbin' and shootin' and sending those things into the afterlife. It's a hell of a lot harder to be with people and deal with their emotions and issues. This is your _family._ She's all you got left of your wife. You need to nut up, Winchester, for your kid, before she decides she can't forgive ya any more and ya lose her for good."

Bobby turned and stalked out of the room, muttering under his breath about "damn fool idjits" and "don't listen to reason".

Sam looked at them both. "He's right...they'll still be out there whether or not we go hunting for them tonight or in a week or a month. And Aly needs to feel protected right now, especially since she just remembered about Meg. If any of us leave, it's going to play right into those feelings of abandonment that she's had."

John sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Sam, do you think she's ready to talk to me yet? Or even, just see me?"

"I'll ask her in the morning," Sam told him. "She had a rough time earlier," he gave Dean a look, "So she may not want to get into any more emotional stuff too deeply right now."

"Even if I could just be with her- sit with her-" John's voice shook.

Sam put his hand on John's shoulder. "I know, Dad. But she's got a lot of unresolved guilt with you that needs to be dealt with before she's going to feel comfortable with doing that."

He stood up and picked up his plate. "I'm going to go check on her and make sure she's still sleeping."

"Man, why is she still sleeping so much?" Dean asked.

"She's still healing," Sam said as he left the room. "And PTSD and stress can cause a need for more sleep."

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

I was wearing one of my new outfits- dark pink yoga pants and hoodie, with the Kansas t-shirt- and I had had a breakfast that included two pieces of bacon. Now I was walking up the hallway with Sam next to me in case my legs got weak.

We walked to the door of the kitchen. Calvin was at the stove and Dad and Uncle Bobby were sitting at the table with mugs in front of them.

"Well hey there," Uncle Bobby said, smiling at me. "How are ya, Shorty?"

Dad looked at me, and his face lit up when I made eye contact with him.

"Hi, Dad," I said softly, and I reached for Sam's hand. "Hi, Uncle Bobby."

" _It's okay, Aly,"_ Sam said to me in my head as he took my hand.

"Hi, sweetheart," Dad replied to me, smiling so broadly that his dimples got deep. He shifted like he was going to get up, but then he didn't.

"We're just getting a little exercise," Sam told them. He looked down at me. "How are you feeling?"

"My legs feel a little weak," I said.

"Take it slow back to the room," Calvin said. "May sure you stay hydrated, and rest after."

Sam and I turned around and I stumbled a little. He put his arm around my waist and kept it there as we walked back to my room. I got back onto the bed, and then flopped back. "Wow that tired me out," I said. I sat up, even though I felt weak now.

"You should rest," Sam said.

"I don't want to rest," I said peevishly. "I'm tired of resting all the time!"

"I know, but it's what Calvin told you to do. Doctor's orders, remember?"

I sighed with annoyance. "People are really going to start ordering me around again?" I grumped.

Sam laughed. "What are you talking about, no one is ordering you around! Geez, drama queen much?" he teased me. "Get some rest, and then maybe you can talk to Dad today." He looked at me. "Do you feel up to that?"

"Uhh..." my stomach got twisted up with nerves. "I guess...?"

"All right then, get some rest, and after lunch, we can do that. Okay? And if you're not feeling up to it, it doesn't have to happen."

"Will you be there with me? And Dean too?" I looked up at him.

He smiled at me. "Yes, we'll both be there with you. Now rest."

I laid down again, feeling like I was wide awake, but then the tiredness hit me, and I felt myself falling asleep..


	3. Chapter 3

Lunch had been Bobby's leftover stew, turned into Shepherd's Pie. He had bought pie crust from the store, claiming that he'd never gotten the hang of making it, and he had said, "We need ya out of this bed so you can take over the cooking, Shorty," to me.

I had been able to eat most of the serving I'd been given, and I had managed to walk to the bathroom by myself without getting weak or wobbly. Calvin said if this kept up, I could possibly move to a regular bedroom tomorrow.

"You ready?" Sam asked me.

I nodded, and he walked over to the door and stepped into the hallway for a moment. Then he came back in with Dad behind him. Sam sat on the bed next to me and took my hand, and gestured to the chair that was by the bed.

"Should I sit here?" Dad asked, looking at me.

I glanced up at him, nodding silently.

Dean shifted in the corner and cleared his throat.

Dad looked over at him. "So we're all going to be here?"

"It's what Aly wants," Dean said.

"Okay," Dad said.

I took a deep breath and clenched my hands together. I tried to start talking and the words stuck in my throat. I took another deep breath.

"First I just wanted to say I'm sorry," I said. "I'm sorry that I ran away and...and caused so much trouble and grief. I know that I'm in trouble and..."

"Don't focus on that," Dad said. "The focus here is getting you better."

"But- running away is a big rule breaker, and I know that Sam got in huge trouble before-"

"Alyson," Dad said quietly, "Yes, you ran away, but that's not what's important here. What's important is helping you heal from everything that happened."

"That wouldn't have happened if I hadn't run away!" I burst out. "It was _my_ fault!"

"All right," Dad said firmly. "Yes, you ran away. No, you shouldn't have. Yes, you should be in trouble for that. But everything that happened to you negates that right now. You need to work through and heal from everything that was done to you. We will sit down and deal with your running away in the future, not any time soon. All right?"

His voice had gotten stern. "Is that clear?" he asked, more sternly.

"Yes sir," I said, responding to his tone automatically and ducking my head.

Sam reached out and touched my shoulder.

"Dad," he said quietly. "Let her talk about it, she needs to get everything out of her system."

"Okay," he said, sitting back. "I'll listen."

"I, uh, I did a lot of bad things while I was there, I mean I was living with this father and daughter, she- she had no rules or anything, and he was really permissive...so we went to parties and we, uh, drank and smoked, and, uh, he taught me... he taught me how to drive." I glanced up at him, but his expression hadn't changed. I remembered when they had come back from a hunt that summer I had stayed at Ellen's Roadhouse, and how angry he had been when she had told him I had snuck out and drank.

"I'm- I'm sorry, Dad."

"Water under the bridge right now," he said evenly. "We'll address it later."

I took another deep breath. "Okay," I said in a shaky voice. "Well, they, uh, they had rescued me kinda, when I was at this truck stop this guy came up to me and tried to take my money, and he was hitting me, you know? And Ze- Zeke came up and pulled the guy off of me. And he invited me to eat with him and his daughter, and we got to talking, and they invited me to their house...and I stayed."

"Jesus, Alyson," Dean said quietly.

I looked over at him. "What?" I said defensively. "I was hurting and scared, I had a big black eye and a split lip, I had no idea what I was doing! And they offered to help!"

"All right," Sam said soothingly. "Take a deep breath."

He sent me _"Be calm"_ in my head, a reminder to keep breathing and not get all upset.

"So they were really nice...Meg took me clothes shopping, she's really good at putting outfits together. She showed me how to do my makeup and hair and all...we got close, like sisters, you know?" I glanced up at Dad.

He was still watching me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his arms up, resting his chin on his closed fists.

"We went to parties and stuff, like I said, and Zeke was real permissive...but then I asked him about it, and...we started talking." I felt my face get red as I remembered the kind things he had said to me, how accepted and loved I had felt, how I threw myself into his arms.

I bowed my head and tried to will the tears back, but a couple of them fell. I wiped them away, and lifted my head, but I couldn't look at Dad. I felt awful, like the worst person in the world.

"And Zeke and I got closer, you know, we talked and we watched movies together 'cause Meg didn't like them, she said anything filmed in black and white is boring." I realized I was babbling.

I took another deep breath. "So I started calling him Dad." I said in a quiet voice. "I—I felt like he was, and I felt like Meg was my sister. I'd never had a sister, and it was so fun, and he was so understanding and nice- I mean I'd never had that experience either-" I stopped, realizing what I had just said. I looked up at Dad quickly.

His head was down now, and I think his eyes were closed.

"I'm sorry Dad!" I burst out, and tears started to pour down my face. "I was living with him and calling him Dad and he was so good to me, and -and he was _the_ demon, the one who killed Mom, and I'm sorry I didn't know!" I was babbling again, but I couldn't stop. "And I started to forget all of you, and-"

"Alyson, stop," Dad said, and his voice sounded pained. He raised his head and looked at me, his face red, and I could see tears in his eyes.

"Daddy I'm sorry," I repeated, closing my eyes and bracing for the yelling that I was certain was going to start.

"Of course you weren't going to know what they really were," Dad said evenly. "That's what they do, they trick you, and give you what you want to draw you in. It's hard to tell, unless you know the signs, and I...I didn't teach you how to look for the signs. You had no idea how to check, or defend yourself, and you were vulnerable, because I didn't teach you, and that's my fault."

"But I should have known!" I protested.

"How, Aly?" Sam asked quietly. "Did you hear what Dad just said? Learning how to detect demons is a skill that has to be learned, it doesn't just come naturally."

"But I still-"

" _No,_ Alyson," Dad said in a hard voice. "Stop blaming yourself. You didn't know, and they tricked and manipulated you, just like they do."

"But-"

"NO," he said with finality. "All right, is this what you want? I'm mad at you, Alyson, for living with this demon that I've been hunting all my life, you should have known better, how dare you run away and cause all this trouble, you're a bad daughter, and I'm going to wear your butt out for all the awful things you've done. Is that what you want to hear?"

I had lowered my head and started to cry while he spoke.

" _Dad,"_ Sam admonished. "That's not helping!"

"That's not how I really feel, Sam, but it seems to be what she wants!" Dad retorted.

"Yes," I whispered. "Because it's the truth."

"No, Alyson. No." Dad replied firmly.

"But it's _my fault!"_ I exclaimed loudly.

"What is?"

 _Everything!_ I- all of you got hurt, you had to go into a house full of demons to get me, and you got stabbed!" I looked at Dad. "If that angel hadn't been there, you would have died! And-and that would have been on _me!"_ I started to cry harder at this point.

"But it wasn't," Dad said. "We're not dead and we're not injured. We would have taken the same risks for any of us-"

"But I didn't deserve it!" I yelled at him.

"What?" he looked stunned. "Why not?"

"Because I'm not—I'm not a hunter, I don't belong in this family, I never did, and everything he said to me just reinforced that, he said that with my powers you wouldn't want me, that you'd hunt me, and-"

Sam came over to the bed quickly, pushing Dad out of the way, and grabbed my hands.

" _Aly, stop,"_ he said in my head, _"Calm down. You're getting too upset right now. Take a deep breath."_

Dad was standing by the bed now. "When is that going to stop?" he asked tightly.

Sam turned his head to look at Dad. "What?"

"All of these ridiculous beliefs about her not belonging and that she's a failure and all that. It's been practically all her life and no matter what we say, she doesn't listen! When is she finally going to believe that it's not true?" He sounded angry now, and I shrank down, away from his anger.

"I'm sorry!" I wailed.

"Okay Dad," I heard Dean say, "let's take a walk. C'mon, she's too upset now."

They left the room, and then it was just Sam and me with my sobbing.

"He- he said that you wouldn't want me," I sobbed in Sam's arms. "He said that I was a burden to you, and that my powers made me more his than Dad's, that- that if you came across me with my powers, that you'd gank me...that I couldn't go back to you!"

"Shhh..." Sam said, stroking my hair. I felt him resting his chin on the top of my head.

"You know that none of that's true," Sam said. "You're not a case we need to hunt. You're part of our family."

"I'm in the family but I'm not part of it!" I insisted.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not a hunter, I never have been, I can't...I couldn't do any of it. Remember when Dad would try to teach me, and I'd always fail at everything? And he'd get this look on his face, and then just say, "We'll have to try something else," and then turn away..." I was crying hard by now.

Sam held me tightly. "Shh, calm down," he said. "You're going to make yourself sick."

Sam tried to make me feel better, he sent me images in my mind of us when we were younger, us watching him play in a soccer game, curled up on the sofa together watching old monster movies, the time we went to Pastor Jim's for Christmas-

I sat up. "Stop." I said firmly, out loud. I felt angry suddenly. "It's not gonna help." I said.

Sam let go of me. "Why not?" he asked.

"Because you left me! All of you left me, over and over again, every summer, and I never knew _when_ you were coming back or _if_ you were coming back, and, and then when you _did_ everyone would be all angry, and Daddy would barely...barely look at me, and then I'd get in trouble for misbehaving, and then we'd leave and you'd drop me off at someone else's place!"

I was crying hard again, but I forced the words out. "Do you know what that's like?" I asked. "Hunting was more important than me. You tell me I matter and Dean tells me that his most important rule was 'watch out for the baby and Sammy', but I guess that only applied for a little while, because there was no one watching out for _me_ the past few years! I mean yeah you guys checked on me and did stuff like put the GPS on my phone to keep an eye on me, but you didn't know what was going on in here!" I tapped my chest.

"And no matter what I tried to do- whether it was trying to help out as much as I could, or just say 'fuck it' and be as bad as I possibly could, to get Dad's attention, it didn't matter! When I did stuff to help it was just, "Now do this, now do that", and when I was bad I got punished, and that was it. No one ever paid me much attention!"

"There were times that we did-" Sam said weakly.

"Yeah, you and Dean- _sometimes!"_ My voice was bitter. I turned away from him, moving up to the head of the bed.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm done for now," I said angrily. "I need to be alone."

"Alyson-" Sam said regretfully.

"Did you hear what I just said? Don't try to feed me any bullshit lines to make me feel better right now." My voice was harder than I had ever heard it.

He sighed. "All right. Do you want me to leave?"

"Yes." I pulled my covers up and turned away from him.

"Come find me if you need me, okay?" he said.

I didn't answer him, and he sighed again and stood up, and turned to leave.

I got scared then, and I looked over my shoulder and called, "Don't hate me, Sam!"

He stopped in the doorway and looked back at me. "I don't, Aly." he said quietly.

I curled up in a ball and closed my eyes and tried to make sense of the tangle of feelings in my chest.

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

Dean and John stood at the counter in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee maker to finish brewing.

"You gotta be careful how you talk to her, Dad," Dean said cautiously. "You can't get mad at her like that right now. She's really- she's fragile."

John ran his hand through his hair in a gesture reminscent of Dean's. He sighed heavily.

"I know, Dean, I just got frustrated and my mouth got in front of my thoughts. She's like- her thought processes are so different from you and your brother's and I can't- it's a little intimidating sometimes. I feel out of my depth."

"We've got to learn how to deal with it, Dad." Dean said. "I know what you mean, but I'm still afraid we're going to lose her. Who knows what kind of screwed up shit that bastard did to her and said to her? What if we can't get through all that, and she decides- to walk away from us?" Tears stood in Dean's eyes for a moment, and he blinked them away.

John turned and got out two mugs, and filled them from the carafe, then handed one to Dean. They both sipped the coffee, thinking for several long moments.

Sam came into the room, and saw them at the counter.

"Coffee, Sam?" John asked, opening the cabinet again.

"No," Sam said, and John closed the cabinet quickly and turned to look at Sam- his tone of voice was stony.

"We've got a problem," Sam said.

"And what problem is that?" John tried to make his voice light, to hide the panic he felt in his gut.

"The problem is you. _You,_ Dad!" Sam said angrily.

"Excuse me?" John said defensively, standing up straight. He still wasn't used to Sam being so forthright about things and talking to him as if they were equals. Even though he had to look up into Sam's eyes now, and had for a few years, he still thought of Sam as that little boy who had puppy-dog eyes and followed his big brother around.

"The problem is you!" Sam repeated. "You've screwed things up with Aly!"

"Hey, Sammy, come on-" Dean started, trying to smooth things over before they got really ugly. His old role of peace-keeper slid back onto his shoulders as comfortably as a well worn jacket.

"No, Dean." Sam said. "This has been brewing under the surface for a long time now, and it's finally all coming out. Aly feels like shit, and you know why? Because she's never felt like she belonged. She could never do any of the hunting stuff, and then-"

"She knows that I love her despite that!" John interrupted.

Sam gave him a look. "Really, Dad? _Really?_ How could she know that, when you just kept taking her to different people all summer over and over again, dropping her off, and leaving her! You never stopped to think how that made her feel! None of us did! And the closer we got to that yellow-eyed bastard the less we cared about anything else! And no matter what she did, nothing mattered. She'd act out and get in trouble, she's do what you wanted and you just wanted more. She's felt like she didn't belong for a long time, she's felt invisible, and it's no wonder she ran off and left us! For God's sake, she got more love and acceptance from a bunch of fucking demons than she did from her own family, even if they did it just to trick her!"

"HOW DARE YOU!" John yelled at him, his anger blooming fully. "That bastard did _none_ of that with good intentions, how can you even _compare_ how he treated her to how we treated her? _We're_ her real family!"

"Who just kept dropping her off at people's houses again and again. And basically ignoring her between those times. Dean and I spent a lot of time raising her, Dad, while you were off ridding the world of supernatural fuglies."

"Sam, you don't understand, after your mother passed, all I saw was evil," John said." I wanted to train all of you to know how to fight it so you'd be safe, and I wanted to find out what had...taken her. I had to find out."

"At the expense of your relationships with your kids?"

"What- we have relationships!" John retorted.

"Sure, the three of _us_ do," Sam gestured at the three of them. "How about Aly? Can you name one thing you know about her? Who's her favorite author, Dad? What kind of music does she like? What songs were they working on at school for the choir concert? What's her favorite food? Favorite color?"

"All right, all right!" John snapped. "I'm a shitty father, is that what you want me to say?"

"No, Dad, just realize that you messed up...and you need to make it up with her...and you need to really change and show her you're changing. That's what matters most to her- not me, not Sammy, but you, Dad." Dean said softly. "Missouri and Bobby were right. She need her Dad right now."

John sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose briefly, closing his eyes for a moment. "I know that," he said. "but I don't – I don't know what to do, I don't know how to get through to her-"

"You don't have to get through to her, Dad" Sam said. "She's not a case to be solved. Just let her talk and listen to her and give her attention and love. And maybe apologize. More than once."

John sighed again and looked at Sam. "You make it sound so easy," he said. "How is it you know all this stuff?"

"Because I'm not former military and I'm not someone who represses everything," Sam said, looking at him, and then at Dean.

"Hey," Dean said, "Just because I'm not a fan of chick flick moments-"

"Oh, come on, Dean, you're out of your depth here too, and you know it. You haven't really known how to handle Aly for a few years now. She's not a little girl who's happy with just a bar of chocolate any more." Sam put his hand on his hip and gave Dean a look.

Dean sighed, an echo of his father, and looked chagrined. "I know. I know! Isn't there like a book somewhere, 'The Care and Feeding of the Teenage Girl" that we could read?"

"I'm going to go apologize...for the first time." John said.

"I don't know, Dad," Sam said warningly. "She was upset when I left. She actually wanted to be alone. Go easy, okay?"

"I will," John said, as he walked out of the room.

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

There was a quiet knock on the door.

"What," I called out irritably.

The door opened, and I turned around in the bed. Dad stood in the doorway, looking nervous.

"What do you want?" I asked tiredly. I didn't have any more fight in me right now.

He stepped into the room. "Can I come in? And- and talk?"

I shrugged. "I don't have anything to say right now, but if you want to talk I guess I'll listen."

"Good," he said. He closed the door and came over to stand by the bedside.

"Alyson, I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "I'm sorry that I've- I've messed things up through the years."

"It's not your fault," I said dully.

"Yes, it is. I paid more attention to the bad things out there than I did to my own family, and that's had a lot of negative repercussions, the biggest of which is that I royally screwed things up with my only daughter."

I looked down at the bed and felt myself blushing. "You don't have to-"

"Yes, I do." he insisted. "I need to fix this. I _want_ to fix this. You're all I have left of Mary, you look so much like her, you have some of her mannerisms sometimes, and I can't- I can't lose that. I can't lose you."

I looked up at him. "I- I look like her? And act like her?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "Sometimes your laugh sounds like hers. And the way you do things, you fiddle with the end of your hair sometimes, and the way you hum when you're cooking."

"Really? I wish- I wish you talked about her more."

"I know. It's still- it's still so hard." he exhaled, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Alyson, I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. I'm sorry I left you with people over and over again. I know that made you feel like crap. It wasn't my intention. I was too focused on-fighting the evil out there and finding what killed your mother. And that made everything else fall by the wayside, and now I see how much of a mistake that was. And I want to change, I know I can't change the past, but we can move forward and try to make things better now...can we do that? Please?" his voice sounded like he was ready to cry.

I looked up at him and hesitated. I still felt so guilty, but I did want things to change. "Uh, yeah, we can try..." I said slowly.

He took my hand and squeezed it gently, and then pulled me to him for a hug.

And then I was engulfed in his arms, in one of his John Winchester Bear Hugs. I hadn't had one in months, it seemed, and even though it was hard for me to breathe I didn't mind, because his arms were around me and I was pressed into his broad flannel chest that smelled like wood smoke, just like always. I remembered how safe I used to feel when I was little and he would hold me like this.

I sniffled as tears came to my eyes.

"It's all right," he said softly. "It's all right, let it out."

I leaned against his chest. "I'm sorry, Dad." I said quietly. He sat down on the bed next to me, still holding me to him.

"No, I'm sorry," he said. "I'm the one who should be apologizing to you again and again. I messed up in the past, and I know this, and I want to change so that the future is better...all right?" I felt his hand on the back of my head and I looked up at him.

Tears were on his cheeks and I noticed that his stubble had just about become a beard. He hadn't had a beard since I was little. I reached up and touched his thick scruff and said, "Remember how I used to pet your beard?"

He chuckled and wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. "And then you got all freaked out and cried after I shaved it off. You said I took your Daddy away."

I chuckled too, then I put my arms around him and snuggled into him. More tears came and I let them, and he held me and let me cry, stroking the back of my head. And I did something I hadn't done in years and years, I actually fell asleep with my head on his chest, and his arms around me.

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

Sam led me into the room next to the kitchen. Apparently Calvin had a formal dining room that was rarely used. There was a long, shiny wood table, with a fancy cloth runner and a couple of vases and candle holders in the center. Each place setting had a place mat and what looked like china dishes. The candles were lit and there were some candles on the side board lit as well.

I looked at Sam. "What's this for?" I asked, feeling a little apprehensive.

"To celebrate you being up and around," he said, smiling at me. "Tomorrow you can move to a regular bedroom."

Everyone was sitting at the table, looking at me and smiling. Calvin walked in carrying a bottle of wine and a bowl of salad. He offered the wine around as I sat down next to Sam. Dean was on the other side of me, Dad and Bobby were across the table, and Calvin sat at the head. When he got to me, he skipped over me, and I noticed there was no wine glass at my place either. With a pang I was reminded of drinking wine with Meg and Zeke at dinner.

"Sorry it's not real fancy," Calvin said. He had asked what I wanted to eat and I had said hamburgers would be fine.

I looked around at everyone, busy serving themselves, and was overcome with another wave of sadness, remembering Rosa's cooking and her delicious burgers. How she had teased Meg and me when we tried to sneak into the kitchen to get treats late at night or before dinner.

And then I had a flash of memory, of her grabbing me after I ran from Zeke, and then looking up at her and Linda and seeing their eyes turn black, and the realization of what that meant...

"Aly? Aly!" Dean snapped his fingers in front of my face. I focused on him- he was holding the bowl of salad up to me. I took it from him, but I felt weak now, and my hands sagged. The bowl hit my plate with a loud 'clink', and everyone looked at me.

"Alyson?" Dad asked with concern. "What's going on? You look like- like you've just seen a ghost."

I swallowed uneasily. "I was just remembering, uh, we used to, uh, have fancy meals all the time, and uh..." I didn't want to make them feel guilty. "With crystal glasses and fancy china and all and Zeke let me and Meg have wine at the table and, uh, the cook, Rosa, she was really good, but you see-" I looked around at each of them. "She was a demon too! Every single person who worked in that house was a demon! She used to- she'd tease us when we tried to sneak food before a meal, she made these awesome huevos rancheros-" Tears filled my eyes as I then recalled how she had made them for me, after I'd been assaulted, to make me feel better. How could she have cared about me and done something nice, only to be a demon? Was _every single thing_ that had happened in that house a trick? How was I supposed to be able to trust _anything_ ever again?

I lowered my head and tried not to cry, but the tears started to fall.

"It's okay, Alyson," Dad said. "They were using the bodies of rich people, to lure you in and give you a false sense of security."

"She made me the eggs to make me feel better after- after I was-" I couldn't even bring myself to say it to them. "And then she came after me and grabbed me- when...I mean, after Zeke showed me who he really was, I tried to run, and she and one of the other servants grabbed me and brought me back- and I saw their eyes change-" I shuddered, remembering the terror again.

I was crying hard by now, and I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Oh, Alyson," Dean murmured.

I jerked away from him and turned to him. "Don't call me that!" I said loudly.

Dean looked shocked. "Sorry, I- what do you want me to call you?"

"They called me that, they called me that most of the time and I let them start calling me Aly at the end, but I can't hear Alyson without hearing _him_ saying it," I was crying even harder now.

" _Aly,"_ Sam said in my head, _"Breathe, honey, you're getting close to an anxiety attack. I know you're scared...this is just memories. You've already been through it once, you can get through the memories."_

"It doesn't feel like it!" I retorted out loud.

"What?" Dean said, looked from me to Sam.

Sam shook his head. "Just trying to calm her," he said quietly. I felt him trying to soothe me in my head, whatever he did, and it started to help a little bit.

I looked around at them through my tears and noticed that no one was eating, everyone was watching me with uncomfortable expressions on their faces.

"I ruined dinner...I'm sorry!" I wailed.

"No, it's all right," Dad said.

"We're just worried about ya is all," Uncle Bobby chimed in.

"Sweetheart, what do you want us to call you?" Dad asked. "Is Aly okay?"

I sniffled, trying to get ahold of myself. "Yeah, I guess," I said. "I don't- it doesn't bother me like hearing my full name does."

"Okay," Dad said, smiling at me. "Aly it is then."

" _Can I still call you Alybug?" S_ am asked, and I turned my head and smiled at him.

" _Of course you can, that's a you and me thing,"_ I told him.

"Would you two stop with the 'psychic friend' conversations?" Dean asked in an annoyed tone. "It's kinda rude."

"I'm trying to help her feel better," Sam said.

"Well, we can do that too." Dean retorted.

I took a deep breath and wiped the tears off of my face, then picked the salad bowl up off of my plate. I took a small amount and handed the bowl to Sam.

"Could I have the French dressing please?" I asked. Sam held out his hand and the bottle slid across the table into it, and he picked it up and handed it to me.

"Jesus, Sam!" Dean said.

"What?" Sam said defensively. "I told you that I can't control it as much when I'm upset. I'm just... a little tired and a little...on edge right now. I didn't mean to do it, I wasn't thinking."

"Why are you on edge?" I asked. "Because of me?" I looked at him and noticed how tired he looked, how he had the tell-tale dark circles under his eyes, and stubble on his chin. I realized that he had been with me almost 24-7 since I'd woken up- and probably since before that too.

"Sam," I said, and a fresh round of tears started, "I'm so sorry!"

"For what?" he asked.

"For making you do this, for making you have to take care of me constantly, you haven't had a break, and I'm sorry, it must be really hard on you-"

"Aly, no, it's okay," Sam said, "I don't mind, really-"

I looked at him. "It's _not_ okay! I don't deserve this, any of it!" I pushed back from the table and ran, and I didn't know where I was running to. I ended up at the front door, leaning my head against it and crying.

"Aly," I heard Dad's deep voice behind me and then felt his hand on my shoulder. He turned me towards him and pulled me into his chest. "Don't say that," he said quietly. "You _do_ deserve this. You deserve to be taken care of, you've just been through a horrible experience."

He put his finger under my chin and raised my head so that I was looking into his eyes, "But this," he tapped the door, "can't happen again, do you understand me?" his voice got stern. "Don't you try to run again."

"I- I wasn't, Dad, I was just- I wasn't trying to leave, I promise," I said.

"All right, good," he said, and he hugged me again. I put my arms around him and hugged him back.

"Come on," he said, turning us around, "Come eat, and then we can watch a movie if you're up for it?"

"Okay," I said, trying to be agreeable.

We came back into the dining room and sat down. Everyone looked at me again.

"It's okay, I'm all right," I said. "I'll be fine."

Dean reached over slowly and patted my shoulder, giving me a small smile.

I picked up my hamburger and ate a couple of bites, grateful that it was something I could hold with both hands. I was embarrassed by my hands shaking.

" _Aly, I didn't say any of that to make you feel bad,"_ Sam told me. _"Please don't take it that way or feel guilty."_

" _Okay, I'll try not to,"_ I said. _"I can't help it though. Bobby said you guys had been at my bedside 24-7, when I first woke up."_

" _We'd do that for any of us,"_ Sam said. _"Don't feel guilty."_

"Aly," Dad said loudly.

I turned my head to look at him. "Did you hear me?" he asked.

"Uh, no, sorry," I said. "What?"

"What movie would you like to watch?"

"I'll even watch a chick flick," Dean said easily. "How about one of those costume ones with all the low cut dresses and heaving bosoms?" He grinned at me mischievously.

"Oh, you!" I threw my napkin at him. "Just for that I'm going to insist on a double feature of 'Sense and Sensibility' _and_ 'Little Women'."

"Hmm, how many little women?" Dean raised his eyebrow.

"It starts out with them being kids, you perv!" I said.

"They do grow into adults as the movie goes on," Sam said.

"Wait, you've already seen it too?" Dean asked Sam. "Are you _sure_ your name's not Samantha?"

"Shut up, jerk," Sam said, balling up his napkin and throwing it at Dean also.

"Make me, bitch," Dean said back. They grinned at each other.

"All right, you two," Calvin said. "Why don't you two smart-asses clear the table?"

Dad helped me walk to the t.v. room and we sat down on the sofa.

He left to go get some drinks. When he came back into the room he was on the phone.

"-maybe next time. Good luck. All right, bye." He hung up and sat down next to me.

I looked at him anxiously. "Do you- do you have a case?"

Dad put his phone in his pocket and shook his head. "No, they can find someone else to help them." He put his arm behind me on the sofa. "I need to be here with you right now, and that's where I'm going to be."

I felt guilty then. "I'm sorry," I said hesitantly. "If you really need to go-"

He turned his head and looked at me. "I don't need to go anywhere, nor do I want to. I'm staying here to make sure you get better." He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. "Don't feel bad about it."

Sam and Dean came in with popcorn and beer for themselves and sat down next to us. Dad started the movie, but I was tired, and before I knew it, I was falling asleep. I woke up briefly when someone was laying me in bed and pulling the covers up.

I woke up alone. The lights were low, and there was no one in the room or the hallway. I started to panic.

"Sam?" I got out of bed and checked the bathroom. It was empty.

I started to walk to the kitchen, getting more and more scared. I didn't like being alone and it was too dark in the house. It must be the middle of the night?

"Sam!" I called out again when I got to the kitchen.

I closed my eyes, and tried to reach out for him in my head. _"Sam!"_ I called in my head. _"Where are you? SAM!"_

At this point I as trying not to panic. I heard footsteps coming into the room. I was swaying on my feet now, feeling weak and unsteady. I pulled a chair out from the table and sat down heavily.

Dean came into the room first, and saw me. "What's goin' on?" He asked, rubbing his face sleepily.

"I woke up and I was alone! I was... I got scared!" I felt embarrassed admitting this.

Dad walked into the room next, and Sam was right behind him.

"Aly, what's wrong?" Dad asked, looking at my face.

"I don't like being alone!" I burst into tears again. "I know it's dumb, but right now I can't help it!"

" _Aly, I'm sorry,"_ Sam said, _"I wasn't thinking."_

"It's okay, Sam," I said.

"It's not dumb, I'll stay with you," Dad said. "Is that okay?"

"Sure," I said, sniffling and trying to stop crying.

"It's all right," Dean said hoarsely. "Whatever's going on, it's all right."

He came over and hugged me, and then Sam did too, and dropped a kiss on my head.

Dad helped me stand up and walked me back to the room with his arm around my waist.

"It's too dark in here too," I complained.

He turned on the bathroom light and closed the door part way. "Better?"

"Yeah," I said, "Thanks."

He came over and sat down in the edge of the bed.

"I feel like I'm about 4 years old," I groused.

"No, it you were 4 years old you'd be complaining about going to bed. Once I told you you couldn't get out of bed after I had tucked you in, you'd do everything in your power to not be tucked in." he smiled at the memory. "You hated going to bed. Remember?"

"Kind of," I said. I remembered asking for one more book, one more book, one more book. "I remember asking you to keep reading to me."

He smiled. "I had to make a rule that you could pick three books at bedtime, because I found out you got your brothers to read you like 6 or 7 books. They would have done anything for you." He looked a little sad. "I'm sorry that I left so much up to them, and that I wasn't there enough...I know that Dean practically raised you."

"It's okay, Dad." I said. I didn't want him to feel bad.

"No, it's not. Remember how we were going to have a talk when you were sick, last year, and I left suddenly?"

I thought back. "Oh...yeah." I felt embarrassed- I had gotten angry with him and shouted "Screw you!" at him, and he had subsequently roasted my butt but good. I couldn't believe I'd had the guts to say that to him- Dad didn't like it when his kids cursed, and cursing _at_ John Winchester was something that was just _not_ done. As far as I knew, my brothers had never said anything like that to him.

"I was going to tell you about Azazel, and warn you...I thought you were old enough to know, and I wanted to tell you about what happened... the night your mother..."

I held my hand up. "Dad, don't." I didn't want to revisit the pain of thinking about my mother just now.

He sighed heavily. "As it turns out, Bobby spotted some signs that indicated him, so we went to investigate, but it was just a smoke screen. I should have stayed there and taken care of you." He looked up at me. "I'm sorry. Things might have gone differently if I'd stayed, or if I'd at least taken the time to talk to you and tell you what I had wanted to."

"Well, like you said, it's water under the bridge now." I said.

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

"What the hell is going on?" I heard a voice yelling.

"How do we get this to stop?"

"Wake her- wake her up!"

I was being shaken and bounced around and I could hear high pitched crying.

"Aly? Aly!" someone shouted.

I had been dreaming, no, having a nightmare, of pain and terror and feeling my limbs being stretched, while Meg sneered above me with back eyes.

"Alyson!" someone shouted, and then I heard _his_ voice, telling me, _**"He needs your**_ _**soul, Alyson...It'll be like you never existed...if you say yes..."**_ And then knives slashing down onto my arms...

"NOOOOO!" I shrieked, and then I realized the high pitched crying was me.

I opened my eyes. I was flat on the bed, Dad was holding my torso down and Dean was laying across my lower legs. The bed vibrated a little bit and then stopped.

"Oh thank God," Dean sighed.

I looked up at Dad, who was looking down at me with concern on his face. "Aly, are you awake now?" he asked quietly.

"Yeah," I said, and my chest hitched. "What happened?"

"You started having a nightmare, but the bed started to shake and move up and down. Do you remember what you were dreaming about?"

I closed my eyes. "Meg was- she tortured me when she first showed her true self to me, and that's what I was dreaming- she was hurting me with her powers."

Dad nodded grimly. "That's what it looked like."

He got up and helped me sit up. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart." he said.

"We gotta figure out what's going on here, " Bobby said. "I thought the angel said they were blocking her powers. Her powers weren't blocked just then if they were making the bed jump around like a mechanical bull."

"And we don't know what this means, if her powers are getting stronger or somethin' went wrong with the angels or if there's somethin' else going on," Calvin said with concern.

"We need to figure out how to get in touch with that angel," Dad said, looking at everyone.

"Has anyone tried praying?" I asked.

"Why don't you try it, Aly," Sam said. "Since it's your powers, maybe he'll respond to you."

I sighed. "Okay," I agreed. "I'll try it."

Everyone looked at me expectantly.

"I'm not going to right this second!" I told them. "Go back to bed, I'll be okay."

" _You sure?"_ Sam asked. _"I'm here if you need to talk."_

" _I'm sure, Sam. Go back to bed and get some sleep. Love you."_

" _Love you back, Alybug."_ Sam smiled at me as he left the room.

Dad sat down on the bed after everyone left.

"Roll over and I'll rub your back," he said. "If you want. That used to help you fall asleep when you were little."

"I'll try it," I said. I rolled over onto my stomach, and he slowly rubbed my back, and eventually, I did drift back to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

I woke up early. Dad was asleep in the recliner, snoring lightly every once in a while. I closed my eyes and tried to contact the angel, but I had no idea what I was doing. I asked him to come here and talk to us, to help me. After I was done with that, I walked slowly to the kitchen. It was empty, but the coffee maker was on and it had just finished brewing a fresh pot of coffee.

I shuffled over to the counter and opened a couple of cabinet doors, looking for a mug. After finding one, I put it down and filled the mug, then picked it up to take it over to the table where the sugar bowl was.

"And who said you could have coffee, young lady?" a voice boomed behind me.

I flinched violently, my body jerking, and the coffee spilled all over my hand and splashed on the counter. I cried out and turned slightly, to see who was behind me.

Dean stood there, a smile dying on his face, and Sam was just coming into the kitchen behind him.

"DON'T _DO_ THAT!" I yelled, slamming the mug down on the counter, where it splashed more coffee on my hand and wrist. And then just like that, tears were pouring down my face.

Dean's eyes widened, and he looked guilty. "Alyson, I'm sorry- " he said, coming towards me.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" I yelled. Calvin and Dad appeared in the doorway, concerned looks on their faces.

"I didn't mean to- I mean, I didn't think I was going to scare you like that, I'm sorry-" Dean's face was pained now, and he sounded like he was going to cry.

"WELL _DON'T_ DO IT AGAIN!" I yelled, and I turned and tried to walk around him.

Sam interecepted me. "Let me look at your hand," he said, reaching for me.

"DON'T _TOUCH_ ME!" I yelled again.

"I want to make sure you didn't burn yourself," Sam said firmly, and I looked down. The skin of my hand and wrist were red, and I became aware that the skin was burning and throbbing.

I looked up at Sam. "I didn't even notice," I said. "What's wrong with me?"

He took my hand and led me over to the sink, then turned the tap on and stuck my hand on the flow of water. I wiped my streaming eyes with my free hand as I stood there.

Calvin walked over to us. "Common stress reaction, to not notice physical pain until after the fact," he said. "Keep your hand in the water for a couple of minutes."

"Aly, I'm sorry-" Dean said desperately. I glanced over, and he was standing near me, wth tears in his eyes now. "I didn't know."

"It's okay, Dean," I sighed. "Sorry I yelled at you."

"Can I- can I hug you?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said, and he came up to me and gently put his arms around me. I gave him a one- armed hug.

When he let me go, he said, "I was just teasing, I've never seen you drink coffee before."

"Well, I started when I was with- them-" I said uncomfortably. "They had this really fancy coffee maker, and we'd have espresso and stuff every morning with breakfast." I flushed, feeling guilty, and stared at the floor. "Sorry.

"You don't have anything to be sorry for," Calvin said. "Let me see your hand now."

I took my hand out of the water and he looked at it. "It's superficial," he said. "If it still hurts in another few minutes put it back under the water, but it should be okay."

Sam was at the counter, wiping up the spilled coffee. He poured more into the cup.

"What do you take in it?" he asked.

"Um, milk and sugar." I said. "But I don't...I don't need any."

"Sure you do," Sam said. "It's something you're used to, and you don't have to feel guilty about it."

"I—I should have asked, I'm sorry." I looked over at Dad, who had come over to stand near us. "I—I'm not used to..."

"It's all right," Dad said. "Just don't drink too much, okay? Don't want to stunt your growth." He smiled at me, and I could tell he was teasing me. We had always joked about how short I was compared to everyone else in the family, that my brothers had gotten the "Winchester Tall Gene" and that it had completely skipped over me.

Sam handed me the mug of coffee, and I looked down at it, and suddenly had a flash of being at Zeke's and making the coffee in the morning with Meg. I felt a flash of sadness, and then I felt sick, because she had been a demon. I had loved her, and she was a demon! What was wrong with me?

I looked up at Sam, and handed the mug back to him.

"I don't want it," I said desperately

"Aly? What's wrong?" he asked, putting the mug on the counter and stepping close to me.

"Aly?" Dad came closer to me too.

I closed my eyes tightly and covered my face with my hand. "It just...reminds me of being with them."

I started as I felt arms going around me, but then I knew it was Sam.

 _"You have to let that go, Aly,"_ he said. _"That guilt, it's eating you up."_

 _"I can't, Sam,"_ I replied. _"It's here all the time, because I was with them all the time, we did everything together!"_

 _"They got into your head, used your memories against you, used them to tell you what you wanted and needed to hear. They were manipulating you."_

 _"How am I supposed to deal with that? How am I supposed to trust anything or anyone ever again?"_

I started to cry.

"Dammit," I heard Dean say under his breath. "This is all my fault."

"No, Dean," Sam told him. "She's upset about...them." I could hear his voice in his chest as my head was pressed against it.

"Yeah, but I started it." Dean said in an upset voice. I heard footsteps and turned my head as he was leaving the room.

"Dean-" I called weakly. "Great, now he's all upset because of me." I said.

"He's a big boy, he'll get over it," Sam said easily. He let me go and and looked me in the eyes. "I think you should have the coffee if you really want it," he told me. "Come on, let's sit down."

He walked us over to the table and we sat, and Dad came and sat down next to me on the other side. He smiled at me and put his hand on mine for a moment. "It's so nice to wake up and see you in the morning. We weren't sure...well, let's just say it was hard waking up every morning and not knowing where you were or... if you were okay."

I looked at the table. "And here I thought you guys were glad to be rid of me, that you were glad to not have to take care of me any more."

"No, exactly the opposite." Sam said. "We were all so worried."

"All a' these guys were frettin' and feelin' guilty, Aly," Bobby said. "I was practically drowning in Winchester angst. I had to kick their asses a couple times to get them outta their sulks and get their heads back in the game too."

"Bobby, what would we ever do without you?" Sam asked with a smile.

"Dunno, Sam," Bobby said. "Y'all would be an even bigger bunch of idjits than ya already are."

"I'm going to go talk to Dean," I said. I walked out of the kitchen and found him in the library, standing by the computers, scrolling aimlessly through a newsfeed.

"Dean," I said. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have anything to be sorry for," he said. _"I'm_ the one who fucked up. _Again."_ he sighed heavily and rubbed his hand over his face. Then he glanced at me. "My most important job, and I keep screwing it up left and right."

"No you don't," I said, stepping close to him. "You rescued me, right?"

He turned to face me. "Yeah, but you wouldn't have left if I hadn't been treating you like crap."

"Well, it wasn't just you," I said. "It was everything. And I shouldn't- shouldn't have run away, I should have stayed and dealt with things. I just didn't know what to do. I was hurt and mad, and I thought that that was my only option, I guess."

"Winchesters aren't big on talking about stuff, unless it's about the latest hunt." Dean chuckled humorlessly. "Listen," he said seriously, " Please, don't _ever_ run again. We've all been- it's been a rough few weeks looking for you, and, and wondering if- if we were even going to find you or see you again."

He sighed heavily and there were suddenly tears in his eyes. "I mean it, Aly. Don't run away again, ever. Please, come talk to me, or talk to Sammy or Dad if it's me that you're upset with. Hell, talk to Calvin or Bobby or even call Missouri. Okay? Will you promise me that? 'Cause I don't ever want to go through another time when I've thought that we lost you like I just did."

"Okay, Dean," I said, and he smiled at that.

"Come here," he said, and he pulled me into a hug for a long moment. We let go of each other and I looked up at him.

"Are you sorry that you've had to spend all these years looking after me when instead you could have spent all that time on the road actually hunting?" I asked him.

"Aly, I'm a hunter, Dad trained me to be one and I won't deny that I enjoy it. " He said. "I know I'm good at it. Were there times I got tired of watching over you and Sammy, tired of being the big brother? Sure there were. But at the end of the day I always came back to you guys, because family is what matters most to me. And I know there have been times in the past that I've been impatient with you, and times I've gotten angry with you, and I'm way over-protective, but that's because I'm an ass sometimes. I love you, all the time, no matter what. You're my baby sister and all I've wanted ever since you came into our lives was to make sure that you were taken care of. That's been my job, and I'm not gonna fail at it any more."

I felt an overwhelming love for him at that moment, and I flung my arms around him so hard he stumbled.

"Hey, whoa!" he said, laughing as he grabbed my waist.

"Come back into the kitchen, okay?" I asked, releasing him from my hug.

We walked in together and sat down.

"Aly, how are ya feeling today?" Calvin asked me.

"Better," I said. "A lot stronger than before. It's weird."

"Well, I'm wondering if your powers are getting stronger too, because you're feelin' better, and that's what last night was," he said.

"I did pray," I told them, feeling embarrassed. "I mean, I tried to reach out- to the angel and talk to him this morning. I guess that could be praying, right?"

"I guess we just gotta wait and see if the call went through," Bobby said.

Calvin and Dad were at the stove and the counter- Calvin was making omlettes and Dad was slicing up vegetables to put in them.

"Do ya want one, Aly?" Calvin asked.

"Yes, with sausage and peppers please," I requested.

Bobby and Sam were almost finished with theirs.

Dean had just gotten another cup of coffee and sat down when there was a loud sound in the room, which I later realized was the flapping of wings.

Everyone stood stock still and stared at the man in the trench coat who had suddenly appeared in the kitchen.

"Castiel!" I said happily- even though I still didn't remember seeing him before, I felt like I was seeing an old friend.

I ran up to him and threw my arms around him in a hug. He stood stiffly in my embrace, not moving.

"Alyson," he said in his gravelly voice, "Why are you putting your arms around me? What is the purpose of this?"

"I'm hugging you," I told him, letting him go. "It's a way that we greet each other and to also say thank you."

"You are welcome." he said. "But I do not need to be thanked for doing my job."

Dean said, "It's about time you got your feathery ass down here."

Castiel turned his head and looked behind him. "Dean, my ass does not have feathers on it. My feathers are on my wings, which are on my back."

He gave Dean a confused look, tilting his head.

I laughed."It's just a saying," I told Castiel. "Dean's being a smart alec, as usual."

Castiel's confused forehead wrinkles became deeper. "But I thought his name was Dean. Is he also called Alec sometimes?"

"Never mind," Dean said dismissively. "Are you here in answer to Aly's 'angel alert'?"

"I am here because it has been decreed in Heaven that the powers are to be removed from all of the people who were given Azazel's blood." Castiel told us, looking at Sam and then me. "There are demons actively looking for them, and they will try to use Sam or Alyson again. We have been finding all of the others and removing their powers, just to be safe."

"How?" Sam asked. "What do you do?"

"It will be nothing more than the same way I healed you."

"Wait, so you can remove powers too? Why didn't you just do that before?" Dean asked.

"I have been imbued with power from one of the archangels for a short time. I have the power that is needed to do what needs to be done." Castiel stepped over to the table.  
"So, I'll lose all my powers?" I asked. "I barely got to use them. And- Sam and I won't be able to talk to each other any more." I said.

"That will be a small price to pay for your safety from all the demons who would seek you out if you kept your powers." Castiel replied.

I sighed. "All right."

Calvin brought the pan over to the table and flipped the omlette onto my plate.

"Sir, can I make you an omlette?" he asked deferentially, glancing at Castiel.

Castiel looked at him. "No, thank you. I have never understood why humans eat the unfertilized eggs of some birds, but not others. Pigeons seem to be much more plentiful in certain areas, but people still insist on eating only chicken eggs."

"Coffee?" Calvin asked him.

"I do not need to eat or drink, thank you. We should get this done."

"Does it hurt?" I asked hesitantly.

"I do not know," Castiel said.

"Well that's encouraging," Dean said sarcastically.

"I'll go first." Sam said, taking a deep breath.

Castiel leaned down to him and put two fingers on his forehead. In a few moments, he took them away.

Sam stared at the table, then he frowned. "Can't move it," he gestured to the salt shaker that was in the middle of the table.

Castiel walked over to me. He extended his hand and placed two fingers on my forehead. I felt a warmth emanating from his fingers, and then a buzzing in my body. It was almost like an electric current.

"Son of a bitch, she's glowing," I heard Dean murmur.

"Aly?" I heard Dad say, concern in his voice.

"What's- I do not understand. Her powers have been diminished somewhat, but they cannot be removed completely." Castiel stepped back from me.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked. "Why not?"

"I do not know," Castiel said. "I will have to find out why this is not working. This did not happen with any of the others."

I looked up at him. "What's wrong?" I felt worried. "If you can't remove my powers, then they'll keep coming after me all my life!"

All the cabinet doors in the kitchen opened and then banged shut.

"Aly, stay calm," Sam said.

"But- I'll never be safe!" Tears came to my eyes, and the table started to vibrate and rumble, and then it raised up an inch or so off the floor.

 _"Aly,"_ Sam said in my head, _" Be calm."_

"I can't, Sam! I don't know how to control any of this!" I said loudly, feeling an electrical charge sweep through my body. The table came back down onto the floor with a loud thump. I put my hands up to my head. "I can't-"

"I must leave," Castiel said quickly.

"What do we do?" Dad had come over and was staring at Castiel.

"I will speak with my brethren about blocking her powers again until we figure out why we cannot remove them. Something else will need to be done."

There was another loud sound of flapping in the room and the angel was gone.

"Well hey, thanks for nothing!" Dean called after him. "What a bag of dicks," he muttered.

I rubbed my forehead. The memories were coming back in a flood. Things being thrown at me, the knives slicing down my arms, being choked by Azazel telekinetically-and then Azazel- his yellow eyes-all the things he had said to me... and Meg, how she had sneered at me-

"It's all coming back!" I said in a panic, looking at Sam. "All of it! Oh my God!"

I reached out to him with my mind, and he grimaced and put his hand up to his head.

"Ahh!" he exclaimed. "Aly, it's too much!" he said.

I tried to pull back from him, but I couldn't.

"It's just memories," Sam gasped.

"Aly, breathe," I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned. Dad was standing next to me.

All the dishes that were on the table went flying across the room and fell to the floor and shattered.

"I'm sorry!" I screamed, grabbing my head with both hands. More memories cascaded through my brain: the roomful of demons, chanting...seeing Creeper Scott and the guy from the gas station, looking down at the gun in my hand—had I actually shot someone? Killed someone? The thought was too much to bear.

My chair slid backwards across the room with me in it, and I screamed as I fell forward, and then my vision was going black again...

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

John rushed forward and squatted down, picking Aly up from the floor and turning her, taking her face in his hand.

"Aly, sweetheart," he said. "are you all right?"

Her eyes were closed, but he could see her eyes moving behind the lids.

"Man, why is it that every time that angel's around, Aly falls unconscious?" Dean asked.

"It's not the angel's fault," Calvin said. "Sam? Sam! Dean, grab him!"

Sam had started to sag to the side in his chair, and Dean bolted up and grabbed Sam before he fell.

"Geez, if this moose hits the floor we aren't getting him up until he wakes." Dean muttered. "Sam? Sammy?"

After a moment, Sam cleared his throat and then sat up, blinking and looking around.

"Ugh, sorry," he said, looking at Dean, who helped him back into his chair.

"Our link was still there, and the energy she was sending me was too much. It's like when a current gets overloaded." Sam rubbed his forehead. "I have a splitting headache now."

Calvin had walked over to John, who was still trying to rouse Aly.

"Take her back to the hospital room," he said. "Guess she ain't as ready to leave it as we thought she'd be. I'll go get my doctor bag so's I can examine her. Dean, there's a big bottle of ibuprofen in the cabinet next to the fridge, get some for your brother."

John stood up with Aly in his arms, and left the room, and Calvin followed him.

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

 _I was back in the underground lair, on my knees in front of the dais, Azazel towering over me as he spoke:_

 _ **"Isn't it obvious? He needs your soul, Alyson. Your pure, untainted by sin, yet partially demon-tainted soul... It seems my instinct to feed you my blood all those years ago was a good one... While my blood ensures that your soul will recognize Lucifer's, your soul will give Him the power He needs... your body will be obliterated. It'll be like you never existed, Aly. A little side effect that I'm sure your family will secretly be happy about."**_

 _...His eyes blazed as he turned his attention to me and then he practically floated to the dais, grabbing my throat and slamming me against the altar which had suddenly become vertical behind me._ _ **"You have been a thorn in my side from the time I fed you my blood, you miserable, pathetic, human...I should kill you where you stand! You are a colossal waste of my time and effort, you little cow, but my Father wants you so you**_ _ **WILL**_ _ **do what you're told!"**_

 _...He dragged me up by the hair and backhanded me so that I crashed into the altar again. I cried out in pain as a number of demons descended upon me, strapping me in place._ _ **"Bleed her again. I want this ritual at maximum potency. I don't care how they manage that, but I want her powers manifesting whether she likes it or not. I am done being civilized about this any longer!"**_

...I woke up suddenly, gasping, tears pouring down my face, and grabbed at the body sitting next to my bed. It was Dean.

"Aly, Aly, hey," he said gently, as my hands gripped his arms. "It's all right, you're safe now."

"No!" I gasped again. "No, the memories are coming back- he cut me! He used more blood, they did another ritual to make me use my powers...I tried to hide it but I couldn't!"

I looked down at my arms, expecting to see ugly scars on them from the knives, but the skin was pale and untouched.

I looked up at Dean. "What happened? Why aren't there scars?" I grabbed my face and pinched my cheek, hard. "Is this real? Am I dreaming now? Did you really rescue me or am I just in a dream?" I screamed, panicking now.

I tried to get out of bed and run, but Dean grabbed my arms.

"Aly, no, you're fine, this is real!" he said. "Aly, come on."

He turned his head and yelled, "A little help here!" over his shoulder.

Dad and Calvin came to the doorway.

"Where's Sam?" I screamed. "Did Azazel take him? Has he already been used? Is he- is he-" I struggled with Dean, trying to slip away from him.

They walked over to the bed and looked at me.

"Calvin, what is this?" Dean gasped as I fought him.

"Aly, it's all right," Dad said.

"She may be havin' a flashback," Calvin said. "Ya gotta just go with it until she's processed it."

I wrenched myself out of Dean's arms and tried to get off of the bed, but Dad stepped in front of me.

"Alyson Elisabeth, you will not run out of this room," he said in a deep stern voice.

Something in me responded to him. I sank down on the bed and looked up at him, feeling like I was a small child.

"Yes, Daddy," I said, my voice a higher pitch than usual.

"You're safe, Aly," he told me in that same deep voice. "You're remembering bad things that happened before, but right now you are safe. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Daddy," I repeated. I had to obey him; he was my Daddy. He would protect me.

He put his hands on my shoulders and I reached up and put my arms around him, hugging him.

"Good girl," Daddy murmured, and he sat down next to me. I crawled onto his lap and then snuggled my face into his flannel chest, and it seemed like I _was_ a little kid again, and I felt very small and safe in his lap. I closed my eyes and rested against my Daddy. The memories receded into the background, what mattered right now was that I was here with him.

"What the heck just happened?" I heard Dean ask quietly.

"Your Dad got her out of it but for whatever reason, it looks like age regression." Calvin explained.

"Regression? What, is she gonna be like a little kid again?" Dean asked.

"No, her mind just went there as an escape from the memories. It's a way to take a break when things get too rough. She'll come back." Calvin told him. "Let's let them be for now."

I heard footsteps leaving.

"Shh," Daddy said, rubbing my back. "It's all right, you're safe now, you're with us and you're safe." he murmured.

"Safe with you?" I asked in a small voice. "This is real? No bad things happening?"

"Yes, this is real, and no bad things are happening. You're safe now," he said reassuringly.

I didn't want him to leave. "Do I have to take a n-a-p?" I asked. "I don't wanna...wanna be with you." I played with a button on his shirt.

He chuckled and shifted me on his lap a little.

"No, you don't have to take a nap, and I'll stay here as long as you need me to." he told me softly. "You were very brave to go through all that, do you know that?" He stroked my hair back from my face. "You're a brave girl, and you're my good girl."

I tilted my head up to look at him. "I am?"

"Yes, you are." He smiled at me.

I put my head on his chest again. "Don't leave," I said.

"I'm not going anywhere, baby girl," he said quietly.

After a couple of minutes, I asked, "Where's Sammy?"

"He's resting right now," Daddy told me.

"I rest too," I said.

"You rest too," Daddy agreed. I snuggled into him again and closed my eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: Here be angst! Right now I'm dealing with severe back pain, and taking medication, which makes me tired and cranky. Writing is going slowly, and there seems to be lots of angst in pretty much everything that I'm writing right now...**

 **CONTENT WARNING: This chapter refers to chapters 19 and 28 in 'The Adventures of Alyson Winchester' and there is discussion of the assault that occurred in Chapter 19.**

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

I woke up alone, in the hospital bed again.

"Dad?" I called out. "Sam?"

I reached out with my mind- _"Sam? Sam, where are you!"_

 _"I'm here, Aly,"_ Sam replied to me, and then he appeared in the doorway, looking surprised.

 _"Aly, you can hear me?"_ he asked.

 _"Yes,"_ I told him.

 _"Can you do anything else? Move something?"_

 _"I don't know,"_ I looked at the pitcher on the tray table and tried to make it move, but it didn't.

 _"How are we still able to talk to each other?"_ I asked.

 _"I don't know. We need to get the angel back down here to talk to him again."_ Sam came into the room.

 _"But does that mean that my powers aren't gone? That demons will still want me and try to take me?"_ I felt scared again.

" _No, Aly, shh,"_ he soothed me. _"Don't get upset. Maybe this is some weird side effect or something."_

Dad came into the room just then. He looked at me. "Are you back?" he asked with a smile.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "I didn't go anywhere."

"You kind of...regressed a little, after you remembered some things. You were acting like a child, and you sounded like one."

I felt embarrassed. I vaguely remembered playing with the buttons on Dad's flannel.

"I...did?"

Dad smiled at me. "It's all right, Calvin said that it's a way for your mind to take a break from the memories." He looked at Sam. "How are you feeling?"

"My head is fine now," Sam said.

"What happened to your head, Sam?" I asked him.

"After Castiel left, you were trying to reach out to me and it was like you threw all this energy at me, and it was too much for me. I blacked out for a minute and when I came to, I had a really bad headache."

I remembered everything that had happened. "I'm sorry!" I told him.

"It's all right." he smiled at me, then turned to Dad. "Uh, Dad, Aly and I can still communicate."

"What do you mean?"

"We can still talk to each other in our heads," I said.

"Oh," Dad frowned. "Can either of you do anything else?"

I shook my head, and Sam said, "No."

"We need to talk to the angel again then," Dad said. "Are you hungry? It's just about time for dinner. You slept for a long time."

"I am hungry," I said. I got off of the bed, my legs feeling a little bit shaky, and Dad offered me his arm. I took it and we walked slowly to the kitchen together.

Bobby and Calvin were at the stove, and Dean was sitting at the table. He stood up and came over to us as we walked in.

"How are you feeling, Aly?" his green eyes searched my face.

"I'm okay, a little tired." I told him.

"You worried me before," he said.

"I'm sorry-"

Dean leaned down and pressed a kiss to my forehead. "Don't apologize, it's okay." He took my other arm and led me over to the table. I sat down and Dad sat next to me.

Calvin and Bobby had made spaghetti with meat sauce, and Uncle Bobby had also made a spicy sauce for them. He and Dad and Dean all liked really spicy food, and I knew it was going to be too much for me. There was garlic bread and salad too, and Sam and Dad had a glass of red wine with the meal.

"Aly, you want to try your hand at makin' a meal tomorrow?" Calvin asked me.

"Sure, what should I make? Lunch or dinner?" I looked around at them.

"Well, you know what I want," Dean told me. "Your meatloaf, and some pie!"

"You and your pie," Sam said, shaking his head.

"All right, you make me a list of what ya need and I'll go out and get it tomorrow," Calvin said. "After we eat, how about y'all retire to the living room and we can talk? Are y'all up for that?"

"Uh...sure," I said, looking at my brothers and Dad. They agreed with me, and when we finished, we all got up and walked into the living room. I sat on on sofa between Sam and Dean, Dad sat on the other sofa, and Calvin perched on the arm at the other end. Uncle Bobby sat in the recliner.

"Okay, I'm ready to talk a little," I said, taking a deep breath. "About what happened."

"Can you tell us about when you decided to run away?" Dad asked.

"Uh...yeah," I looked down at my hands in my lap. "I had, uh, I snuck a couple of beers in the back seat and I got drunk, and when Sam and Dean found out they were pissed-"

"Well, I wasn't pissed, per se, I was more annoyed-" Sam interrupted. "I was still upset because you were ignoring me."

"I know. I'm sorry, Sammy." I gave him a small smile. I looked at Dad. "Dean was mad because he wanted to be on a schedule and I messed it up. We had to stop so I could eat, 'cause I started to feel carsick. And I was giving them a lot of attitude...Dean made me eat a full meal and drink 2 cups of coffee to get sober, and then he said I was in trouble. And later, he, uh, spanked me with his belt when we got to the motel, and I was really upset-"

"You spanked her with your belt as well?" Dad asked Dean, frowning. "Jesus, Dean-"

"Look, my priority was getting her to Bobby's ASAP, safe and sound, and us having to stop for a meal and then a motel was just keeping us on the road and possibly in danger. You'd have been just as pissed off, Dad," Dean explained defensively, "and she'd been pretty mouthy and obnoxious for days before that, this was kinda the icing on the cake."

Dad crossed his arms over his chest. "Continue," he said, and I looked at him for a long moment, feeling nervous. Was he getting angry at me?

I cleared my throat. "So, uh, later that night, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I just, I decided to leave. I was just feeling really upset, you know, 'cause of the way they'd been treating me, but then I also knew that it was my fault too. I'd been being a brat, and I was thinking that, uh, once you heard how I'd been acting, you were probably going to blister my butt too-"

I looked at Dad and sighed, "and I didn't want to deal with that, 'cause you'd already yelled at me over the phone and all. I was just, just feeling unloved and- alone, you know? And I said, I had told Dean I hated him." Tears came to my eyes, and I wiped them with my hand.

Dean reached over and squeezed my other hand for a moment and smiled at me. He looked like he had tears in his eyes too.

"But I don't, and I didn't, I was just feeling hurt and upset, you know?" I looked at Dean, and he nodded.

I took a deep breath and said, "They seemed pretty out of it, they'd had a lot to drink-"

"Isn't there a rule about not drinking on a case?" Dad interrupted in a loud, deep voice, sounding angry. I cringed back at it.

"Dad, this wasn't a case-" Dean began.

"We've already been over that and you reamed us both pretty good, remember?" Sam cut in, and the three of them all glared at each other. So they had had some sort of confrontation that I didn't know about.

"What- what happened?" I asked timidly.

"John was pissed off and said some things he shouldn't have," Uncle Bobby said in a firm voice. "Let's not dredge it all up again, huh? This is Aly's story she's tellin' right now."

"Fine," Dad growled, and Sam and Dean both said, "Fine," at the same time.

I took another deep breath, and said, "Okay...so, I packed a bunch of stuff in my backpack and I...I took money out of Dean's wallet-" I looked at him, shame-faced. "I'm sorry, Dean," I whispered.

He waved his hand at me. I stared at the table. "So I walked for a while, and then I hopped into this camper van that had stopped. I was in there for a while, and then I got a ride with this really nice guy named Andy."

"Yeah, the demons got to him and his wife," Sam said, in a bitter voice. "Right before we got there...they were a couple steps ahead of us for a long time."

"What do you mean...got to him?" I asked, staring at Sam.

"I thought if we could talk to him we'd get a lead on you, and we were too late." Sam sighed heavily, and looked at me. "They killed him and his wife, tried to make it look like an accident."

I gasped, and then I remembered having the vision about it- and that was right after—right after—an image came into my head of Scott over top of me, holding me down, his hand at my throat-

"I saw it happen," I gasped, and tears started to drip down my face. "I remember now," I grabbed at Sam's hand.

"You sent me the premontion," he said, and then I saw realization dawning on his face- "That was right after- oh my God, Aly, you were assaulted!" Sam's voice was loud in the room, and everyone else said, "WHAT?" at exactly the same time.

I buried my face in my hands and started sobbing. The fear and the shame that I had felt before welled up.

 _"Aly, I'm sorry,"_ Sam said in my head, _"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."_

I felt a hand on my arm. "Oh, God, sweetheart, tell us what happened," Dean implored, and his voice had tears in it.

I took a deep breath, and took my hands away from my face, but I didn't look up at them. I _couldn't_ look at any of them. I wiped the tears away as I talked.

"We were at a party. We- we went to a lot of them...and we were all drinking and dancing, and this guy...this guy kept following me around. I wasn't giving him any signals, I swear!" I glanced up quickly and then lowered my gaze again. It felt like everyone in the room was holding their breath.

"He followed me when I went to find a bathroom, and he pulled me into a room and threw me down...he didn't...he didn't do, anything, he was going to, you know—he hit me a couple times and groped me, but I was fighting him-"

"Good girl," I heard Dean murmur.

"He had started to take my shirt off, and I was able to...I reached out with my mind and pulled this music box off of a bureau and it hit his head and knocked him out."

I heard exhalations of relief from everyone.

"So, you used your powers to defend yourself?" Sam asked in amazement. "Aly, that- that's incredible! Good job!"

I scoffed. "And if I hadn't been there, hadn't been drinking, none of that would have happened." I said bitterly. "It's my fault."

"You listen to me, young lady," Dad said suddenly, and his voice was very stern. I tensed up, scared that he was going to start scolding me.

"It sounds like you did a lot of bad things while you were with them, and you know you did wrong. No, you shouldn't have been drinking, or whatever else you did at this—party, but assault- _any_ kind of assault- that was _not_ your fault. I don't _ever_ want to hear you blame yourself for that again, _do you understand me?"_ His voice was deep and uncompromising.

"Yes s-sir," I said hesitantly.

"Come here," he said in that same low voice, and I got up and walked over to him, with my head still down. What was he going to-

Dad pulled me into a tight hug, putting a hand on the back of my head, and he said, "I'm so sorry that happened to you, baby girl, I'm so sorry, I'd give anything for that not to have happened-"

I put my arms around him and buried my face in his neck, sobbing. He held me for a few minutes until I calmed down. I moved over and sat next to him, and he passed me the box of tissues. I wiped my face as I talked.

"It was- so scary, the guy- he was choking me for a couple of minutes and I almost passed out, but I did manage to tell him 'fuck you'!"

"Good," Dean said, and his voice was that low hunter's growl that he got when he was angry. "What happened to this...pond scum?"

"He, uh, some of the guys at the party beat the crap out of him after they saw me." I blew my nose and wiped my eyes again.

"Did you go to the police? File a report or anything?" Sam asked, concern wrinkling his forhead.

"Uhh, no, Zeke had said that he was going to 'take care of him', but I persuaded him not to hurt him-"

"Why the hell not?" Dean gritted out. "Sounds like the bastard deserved a lot of hurt!"

"Because I didn't want Zeke to get into trouble either! I mean, I didn't know that- that he was—oh my God!"

Suddenly I remembered- standing in front of the dais, with Creeper Scott there in front of me, and his cocky self-assurance that they were going to let us go so that he could finish what he had started-

 _**"Alyson," James spoke my name softy from my left side. He held the gun out to me...**_

 _ **I took the gun from James; it was heavy but the more that Scott ranted about leaving, the lighter it became. Now it felt like a part of me. The arm that held it was already raised, and I looked at it surprised, not knowing when I had done so. I pointed it at him, this boy that had hurt me, my eyes narrowing in concentration; I didn't want to miss...**_

I had held a gun in my hands. Azazel had given me a gun and expected me to shoot people with it. And had I? I strained my memory, but I couldn't quite recall...

 _**Scott looking at me in utter terror and babbling as I held the gun...**_

 _**"…sorry I touched you…thought you were playing hard to get...won't tell anyone…don't kill me!"** **It was my turn to smile. I cocked the gun. His fear fed my power and it was invigorating. I started to pull the trigger- he closed his eyes and I grinned maliciously...**_

I stared at my family- my brothers, my father, my uncle- "They gave me a gun!" I said. "They wanted me to kill! They had the- the guy from the truck stop and Creeper Scott, and they wanted me to shoot them both! How do you live with yourselves after you've killed someone?" My voice was raising in pitch and volume. "I don't- I'm not a hunter, I've never killed anything before in my life!"

"Aly, it's all-" Dad started to say, but I interrupted him. "No! Don't say it's all right, it's _not_ all right! I know I was holding a gun in my hands and pointing it at a guy who tried to rape me, but I don't know if I killed him!" I put my hands up to my head. "I can't—I can't live with that!" I shrieked. "Maybe I really _did_ belong with him, like he said- maybe I _am_ evil-"

"NO, Alyson!" Dad's voice was that stern growl from before. "Don't think like that! Don't start to think-"

I remembered firing the gun. I remembered what it felt like as I pulled the trigger, and how loud the gunshot had been...but I couldn't remember who I had shot. Tears began to pour down my face again.

"You don't get it-" I said, looking from Dad to my brothers, and then to Uncle Bobby and Calvin. "I can't live with the fact that I shot and killed someone. All those other deaths are already on my head, like the guy who gave me the ride, and all those people who the demons were using as meatsuits! If I shot someone- I can't- I don't want to live with myself if I did that!" I burst into loud sobs and curled up into a ball, feeling absolutely miserable.

"Aly, you can't blame yourself for all of that," Dad said to me. I felt him rubbing my back. "A lot of those people were there with him because they wanted to be, that's not on you. And sometimes...well, sometimes civilians get in the way. I'm sorry, but it's just a fact of life."

"You mean like Andy? He was so nice, he told me that his wife was afraid he was going to get murdered someday by a hitchhiker, and then he did! Both he and his wife, and it's all my fault!" I buried my head on my knees.

 _"Aly, deep breaths,"_ Sam said to me, sending me his calm. _"What Dad is saying is true."_

"How do you live with yourselves after you've killed, after someone who wasn't supernatural ends up dying because of you?" I asked.

"Well, I look at it this way. Whatever supernatural I'm dealing with, it's killed before, and if I don't stop it, it will keep killing. And whoever gets in the way, might have ended up dead anyway, if I didn't get rid of the creature. So I'm saving other lives by killing. And you have to make peace with that." Dad explained.

"I can't!" I said. "I don't know how to do that!"

"And you shouldn't have to," Dad said, putting his arm around me. "Unfortunately, this is the life we lead." I leaned into his chest, and felt him kiss my forehead. We sat in silence for a couple of minutes as I calmed down.

"I'd like for you to learn some self-defense moves, and also how to shoot a gun, so that you can be better prepared in the future." Dad said.

"What?" I sniffled, looking up at him. "No, I don't want- I don't want to learn anything like that, I don't ever want to touch a gun again!" I leaned back, sitting up.

"Aly, it would be a good idea," Dean said, "It's always good to know how to defend yourself."

"No!" I snapped. "No, I _won't_ do it, and you can't _make_ me!" I crossed my arms defiantly on my chest, frowning at my lap.

"If I say you will then you will, young lady-" Dad's voice was stern again.

"NO!" I shouted at him, clenching my fists. Tears came to my eyes and I wiped them away.

"John, now ain't the best time to keep talkin' about this," Uncle Bobby said.

"I think we need to take a break from talkin' now," Calvin chimed in. "Aly, you should go rest-"

"I don't _want_ to go and rest, I'm _not_ a little kid!" I said petulantly.

Dad nudged me with his elbow. "Watch your tone, little girl," he growled.

"Well, now it's just like old times, Aly's saying no and being defiant, and Dad's getting all growly. Where's the Jack Daniels? I sure could use some." Dean said, standing up. That seemed to break the tension in the room. Dean left, and then came back with 5 small glasses and a tall bottle. He set the glasses down and started to pour.

"I don't want any, thanks," Calvin said, holding his hand up.

"You sure?" Dean asked.

"Can I try?" I asked, sitting forward. Too late, I realized I should not have asked.

Dean stopped and looked at me, raising an eyebrow. "No you may not! And why the hell are you even asking?"

"I've tried plenty!" I exclaimed, and then I started to blush as Dean straightened up. Why hadn't I kept my mouth shut?

"What do you mean, you tried plenty? Just how much drinking did you do at those parties?" He was frowning at me now. He screwed the cap onto the bottle and put it on the table with a hard thump, then put his hands on his hips, still frowning.

"Uh—I guess, um...a lot. Some of them were college parties." And then I flinched when he shouted, "College parties? Jesus, you were hanging out with college kids and drinking? What the _hell_ , Aly?" he narrowed his eyes at me. "What else did you do?"

I squirmed under his scrutiny. I was _not_ going to be able to lie, not to any of them. Dad was _the_ consummate bullshit detector, and Dean was a close second.

"Uh, I might have, uh, tried a little, um...pot?" I said hesitantly.

"Are you asking or telling?" Dean said in a tight voice. "I can't _believe_ you." He leaned over and looked at Dad. "Are you hearing this, Dad?"

"Yes, Dean, and like we've said, now is not the time to talk about-"

Dean pointed at me. "You have a _lot_ to answer for, little girl," he growled.

"Dean, let up, would you?" Sam interjected. Dean spun and turned on Sam. "Why? Because she's messed up right now? Yeah, she got all messed up while she was with them, but she didn't have to go and do all that shit!"

"What was I supposed to do, say no?" I asked angrily. "I tried! But they were, you know, insistent-"

"You were in danger, and all of that drinking and partying could have gotten you killed!" Dean was yelling at me now.

"It could have gotten me killed anyway!" I yelled back. "And trust me, I know all about the dangers of drinking and drugs!"

"Oh, so that makes it okay?"

We glared at each other. "No, it doesn't! I was just- just trying to fit in-"

"And all that matters to you is fitting in, and doing what your friends do, and being impulsive. Just like always." Dean shook his head.

It felt like he had just slapped me. "Dean, that's—how can you say that?"

"Because it's true! How many times have you gotten into trouble in the past because of your impulsivity or because you're following along with your _little friends?"_

"Why are you being like this?" I started to cry.

"Because someone needs to hold you accountable for all this shit, instead of sitting there saying, 'oh, poor little Aly' all the time. You're not a little kid, you made these decisions on your own, and you need to face up to them."

"Dean, stand down, it's not your job to hold Aly accountable." Dad said. "There will be a time and a place for all that. But not right now."

Dean leaned down and drank down one of the shots. He grimaced, and then put the glass down and picked up another one and downed it.

"Well, that's just great." he snapped.

"Dean, stand _down,"_ Dad repeated. "We're not doing this right now."

"Fine!" Dean snapped again, and he leaned over and grabbed the bottle and an empty shot glass, and stalked out of the room.

Dad and Uncle Bobby both leaned over and picked up a shot glass, and drank the liquor.

"That boy needs to bring that bottle back here," Uncle Bobby said, and he left the room.

Dad put his glass back on the table, and said to me, "However, you touch another drop of alcohol before you're 21, and I _will_ whip your butt, you got that?"

"Yes sir," I said, feeling my face get red again. Now I was feeling guilty about all the parties and everything that I had done. And Dean was mad at me, again. It seemed like when I got to be a teen, all I did was argue with both him and Dad. They responded to my bids for independence by cracking down on me and treating me like I was still a kid, which made me feel even more rebellious. How were we going to get out of this cycle?

"All right," Calvin said. "We've talked some, and there's been a lot of different emotions flyin' around here tonight. I think we all need to take a step back and just relax for a while. Aly, it's gettin' late, why don't you go get ready for bed?"

"I don't want to-"

"Go on, Aly," Dad said, giving my shoulder a little push.

"Come on, I'll walk you to your room," Sam said, standing up and walking over to me.

"But Saaaam-"

He chuckled. "You sound like you're about 4 years old. Let's go, Alybug," he pulled on a strand of my hair, and put his arm around my shoulders as we walked.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean stood at the counter in the kitchen listening to the hum of the dishwasher. He poured himself a shot and swallowed it quickly, feeling the warmth spread down his throat into his stomach.

Bobby walked into the kitchen, and over to Dean. "What the hell was all that, boy?" he asked sternly. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a tumbler, then poured two fingers of whiskey into it and took a sip.

"What do you mean?" Dean asked defensively. "We're not helping her by coddling her, you know." He downed another shot, quickly.

Bobby took the shot glass from him and put it in the sink, and then pulled the bottle of whiskey nearer to him.

"Aly don't need you bein' halfway to drunk, she needs you to be clear-headed, son. Now, you need to take a step back and look at things for a minute. That kid's been through hell, not once but twice she was kidnapped by that very same demon who killed your mama. They wormed their way into her affections, put a spell on her to make her forget about y'all, tried to bring her powers out, and used her in rituals. You heard what Sam said, when she showed him how they bled her. For cryin' out loud, she woke up thinkin' she was surrounded by demons! You can't be treatin' her like it's just another normal day in the Winchester household, cause all a' that's been thrown out the window. She ain't never gonna be the same, and all a' y'all are gonna have to adapt to that. John's made the commitment to try and change, and be a better dad to her, now _you_ gotta back off and let him. I know you're used to being in charge of Aly an' Sam, but you _ain't_ any more. Back off and be a brother and a son."

Throughout this speech, Dean stared at Bobby. When Bobby stopped talking, and took a drink, he said, "You done?"

"Well, for now, I am," Bobby drained his glass, set it on the counter, and poured himself some more.

"You know what it is, Bobby?" Dean said, and his voice shook. "You know why it upsets me so much that she ran away? That _they_ ran away? Because deep down I worry that it was because of _me_. That they left because they couldn't stand _me_ , or because I think I'm doing such a great job, when really, I'm just shit." Dean's voice broke, and when he brought his hand up to wipe his face, it was shaking. "Maybe deep down, they hate me, 'cause I'm such a crappy big brother," he said in a hoarse whisper. Dean's emotions caught him off guard, and he stared at Bobby for a few seconds.

"Commere," Bobby said gruffly, and he grabbed Dean in a strong hug. Dean's shoulders were tense, but they shook a couple times as Dean let himself cry for a minute or two. They both knew that this was the only time that Dean would express the pain and fear he had felt about Aly running away. After another few moments, he let go of Bobby and stepped back, wiping his eyes with the hem of his flannel.

"Boy, I don't know where you got all those negative feelings about yourself, but they ain't right. You been your Dad's right hand man for a long time, you practically raised Aly, and Sam too, and you're a damn fine hunter. You should be proud of what you've done. Nobody hates you, and those kids didn't run because 'a you. It's not your fault, nothin' that they did was ever your fault."

"But if something had happened to Aly-"

"But it didn't, Dean. Isn't that a Hunter's Rule, you don't go over the 'what ifs', cause if you do, you'll drive yourself crazy?" Bobby put his hand on Dean's shoulder. "I've watched you grow up from a lanky kid to a horny teenager to a damn fine man, and I'm proud 'a you. I know your Dad is too, guess I'm gonna have to kick his ass about talkin' to you as well as to Aly."

"That's okay, I've had more than enough chick flick moments in _this_ conversation to last me a while."

 _"Dean-"_ Bobby gave him a look.

"I know, I know, I've got to try and change." Dean put his hands up like he was surrendering. "It's gonna take a long time for me to get comfortable with talking about, you know, feelings and all."

"And I know you're concerned about Aly, but you gotta keep bein' gentle with her for now...she's still remembering stuff, and we don't know what kind of toll it's gonna take on her when she starts remembering the really ugly stuff. So watch how ya talk to her, huh?"

Dean sighed and raked his hands through his hair. "I guess I better find Aly and apologize." he said. "Again."

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

"Dean's mad at me...again," I said from the bathroom, where I was changing into Sam's humongous t-shirt. I came out of the bathroom and put my clothes on the bench. Sam was sitting in the recliner.

"He went from being in 'hunter mode' to 'protective big brother mode'. It's hard for him to slip out of both of those, and you know he doesn't deal with stress well," Sam said.

"I wish he wasn't so over-protective," I grumbled, walking over and sitting on the end of the bed.

"Well, that' s been his job, pretty much all his life. That's what big brothers are supposed to do, he just takes it very seriously, because of the life we lead."

"How come you're not mad at me like he is?" I asked.

"Because I can see that it's more important to help you work through your experiences right now. Because I know what it's like to be your age, and feel lonely and misunderstood and all that," Sam got up and came over to sit next to me on the bed.

"That's right, you ran away to Flagstaff when you were 14," I said. "I always forget about it, because it was so scary."

"I'm sorry it was scary for you," he said. "I didn't stop to think about how my actions would affect anyone else, and I wanted- I think I wanted to prove to Dad that I could make it on my own, without him and the hunting life, because I was rebelling against it all." Sam put his hand on mine and squeezed it gently.

"And did you?"

Sam scoffed. "Well, no, I was using money I had stolen from him and Dean, and a little bit I had earned from mowing lawns, and that had almost run out when Dad found me. I was too young to get a real job, and I was technically homeless because I was squatting in an abandoned cabin. Of course, I thought I was living the high life, eating junk food and soda and take-out every night, and not doing any training or schoolwork or anything. I didn't think things through, but then, teens usually don't. And when Dad found me, he walloped me but good, and then when we got back to the motel, Dean whipped my butt as well."

"Dean did too?" I was surprised.

"I ran away on his watch, so yeah."

"He got in trouble with Dad-" I said. "Dad spanked him with his belt, I overheard it. Dean was crying a lot, mostly 'cause he was so upset about you being gone."

That had been hard, hearing the belt falling, and Dean's sobs. Dean rarely cried, in fact I'd only ever seen him really cry once or twice. And I had never heard him sob like that before. I had felt so bad for him, and after everyone had gone to bed, I got up in the middle of the night and crawled into bed with him.

Sam grimaced. "Yeah, I felt like crap when I realized how much I'd upset everyone. You were the only one who wasn't mad at me."

"I stayed at Uncle Bobby's, and when Dad called and said he'd found you, Uncle Bobby picked me up and swung me really high," I smiled at the memory. "He was really nice to me the whole time I was there, because I was so sad and worried."

"I'm sorry...I know I said it before, but I still am. Like I said, I had no idea how it was going to affect anyone else."

"I didn't- I didn't think about that either, when I left," I said. "I mean, I thought you guys would be glad to be rid of me."

"Aly, why would you think that?" Sam asked. He brushed my hair back from my face.

"Because of how things had been between us...and I overheard...I overheard Dean complaining about being stuck at Calvin's and wanting to be out hunting. It made me feel worse."

Sam sighed. "I wish you had come and talked to me. I would have reassured you."

"Well, you and I weren't on good terms either," I reminded him.

"I know, and I'm sorry. Again." he shifted position and turned more towards me. "We were so worried, Aly...I felt guilty, Dean felt guilty, Dad was pissed at us, and we were so afraid that once Azazel got his hands on you that he was going to...hurt you...and kill you."

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "All I was thinking about was getting away from you and being on my own," tears filled my eyes. "And I walked right into his clutches!"

I looked at Sam. "Dean is right, it was me being impulsive again! Instead of staying put, and dealing with things, I ran away! It's all- it's all my fault!" I started crying harder, and Sam moved over and took me into his arms.

"Aly, none of us are good at dealing with emotional stuff. Winchesters don't talk about their emotions, they stuff them down or drink them away or- do impulsive things like run away. Part of Dad's training was to curb that impulsiveness, and to teach us how to think everything through before you do it. Because you need a plan when you're hunting something."

"And I'm not a hunter, so I didn't get any of that," I said bitterly.

Sam stroked my hair. "Well, maybe you _should_ let Dad teach you some things. It might help with the impulsiveness."

"I don't—I don't _want_ to learn how to shoot a gun, I don't-"

"I'm not saying that, shh," Sam soothed. "But maybe learning about some of the thought processes and the hunter's mindset would help you. What do you think?"

"I don't know, maybe?"

Sam let go of me and moved over to grab the tissue box. He pulled one out and handed it to me.

There was a knock on the doorframe. "Is this a bad time?" Dean craned his head in.

"What do you want?" Sam asked in a flat tone.

"I, uh, came to apologize...again." Dean stepped into the room, staring at the floor. "Aly, I'm sorry I yelled...I'm your overprotective ass of a big brother, what can I say?"

"You can try not being such an ass," Sam told him.

"Can't help it, it's in my DNA," Dean quipped. He glanced up at me. "I'm always gonna be looking out for you, I just have to remember it's not my job to be everything anymore."

"Are you- are you still mad at me?" I asked.

"I'm a little upset, yeah, 'cause I was so worried about you...I'm always gonna be a little upset when it comes to stuff like that, because I want to protect you. I'm always gonna be your big brother, you know? But... I won't yell at you like I did, okay?"

"Okay Dean," I said, and he looked at me and smiled. "Hug?" I said, and he came over to the bed and hugged me.

"What's got you so upset, huh?" he asked, wiping a tear off my cheek with his thumb.

"Well, you were right, it was my impulsiveness that started this whole thing, I packed up and ran away instead of staying there and dealing with you guys-"

"Of course I'm right!" Dean joked, and Sam said, _"Dean-"_

"But seriously, you know you did wrong, and you realize now that being impulsive can lead to bad things, so you can work on changing that now," Dean cupped my head in his hand and leaned down to kiss my forehead. "I'm just glad we've got you back now."

There was another knock on the door and Dad came in. "Dean- you and I need to talk-" he said gruffly.

"Bobby already got on my case, Dad," Dean said. "I'm gonna back off and just try to be a brother who's not too much of an ass, to my little brother and sister-"

"Who you calling little?" Sam stood up to his full height, towering over Dean, and I laughed.

"I've already apologized, again. No doubt I'll open my big fat mouth and piss everyone off soon." Dean smiled at me.

"Dad, I'm sor-"

He held his hand up. "No, we're not talking any more. You need to calm down so you can go to sleep."

"When can I move out of here?" I asked.

"Calvin said if all goes well tomorrrow, we can move you."

"Will you stay here until I fall asleep?" I asked Dad. He smiled at me.

"Of course, pumpkin," he said.

"Why do you call me that?" I asked.

Dad cleared his throat, and looked at Sam and then Dean, and then me. "Well, right before your mother...passed...it was Halloween. And she made you a pumpkin costume, she sewed it in early October, and you looked so cute in it. She was part of this Mom's group, and they had a costume contest, and she won a prize for it."

"I remember, I was a robot, and Dean was a cowboy...again." Sam rolled his eyes. "How many years in a row were you a cowboy?"

"Hey, I can't help it if I happen to love Westerns!" Dean said defensively.

"Because she made the costume at the beginning of October, I started calling you 'the pumpkin', and it just stuck." Dad smiled at me. "We took you out in the stroller when the boys went trick-or-treating, and people just about lost their minds over you. I thought you would've been grumpy, because you were awake past your bedtime, but you just kept smiling at people all night long. People tried to give you candy too!"

"I let them put it in my bag, and I got more candy that way!" Sam laughed.

"You took candy from a baby, Sam!" Dean grinned at him.

"Well, she wasn't going to eat any of it!" Sam said. He leaned down and hugged me, kissing the top of my head. "Good night, Aly," he said.

Dean gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Sleep well, kiddo," he said to me.

They left the room and Dad sat down next to me.

"Um, Dad?" I asked hesitantly.

"Yeah?" he looked at me.

"Do you...do you hate me...for all the trouble I've caused?" I asked hesitantly.

"No, I don't hate you, how could you even think that?" he asked with disbelief.

"Even if...even if it turns out I did horrible things like kill someone, or something like that?" I folded the blanket in my hands nervously.

He leaned forward and put his hand on mine. "Listen, I have never hated you, and I won't hate you for anything you did. Put that out of your mind right now, understand?" His voice got a little stern.

"Yessir," I responded to his tone.

He took one of my hands and lifted it to kiss, and then set it back down on the bed.

"Get some rest, Aly." he said.

I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.


	7. Chapter 7

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello Dear Reader, my apologies for such a long time between updates. I haven't forgotten about Aly, but a certain other little girl has been demanding all of my time and attention (That would be our dear Charlie I'm speaking of!). I'm planning on trying to regularly update all of my multi-chapter stories soon. Thanks for your patience, and sticking with me! This chapter references the short story "Alyson Winchester: At the Mall" and chapter 28 of "The Adventures of Alyson Winchester".**

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

"Well, since ya had a good night, I think it's safe to say that you can move outta the hospital room," Calvin said to me. We were all eating breakfast in the kitchen the next morning.

"I've got to start seein' patients again, so I need to ward up the medical wing real well and we need to make sure the house is all buttoned up too," Calvin was a hunter and also a doctor who treated hunters, and they would come here for treatment of injuries and illnesses.

"That's fine," Dad said. He looked at me. "Well, Aly, do you want to go look at your room?"

"Uh...okay," I said, unsure of why he was asking me that. I had just figured that I'd be in the same room I had been in before.

My brothers and I got up from the table and I followed behind Dad as we walked to the hallway with all the bedrooms.

Sam was walking next to me. "You're in between me and Dean, and Dad is at the end of the hall," he told me.

Dad pushed open a door and went into the room. I walked in behind him and looked around. The room smelled faintly of fresh paint, and the walls were a very light blue. The sheets and comforter were a matched set, a light blue blending to darker shades of blue, with light yellow stars and crescent moons all over the fabric, and the curtains were a darker blue with the same moons and stars. It also said, 'Love you to the moon and back' on the comforter in different places among the stars. There were two throw pillows on the bed that matched, one was a star shape and the other was a full moon that said 'love you to the moon and back'. There was a nightlight plugged into the wall that had the same design on it as the sheets, and there was a hanging mobile of stars and crescent moons that were made of faceted crystals.

"I didn't want to get you sheets that would look like they were for a kids' room, but the salesperson said that this is popular with teen girls right now," Dad said hesitantly. He looked at me, and it looked like he was nervous.

"We painted it right after you woke up," Dean told me.

"And I remembered that you said you had always wanted a bedroom where stuff matched, because we never had that in any of the rental houses," Sam said to me. "We wanted to make it look nice for you."

I walked over to Dad and hugged him. "Thanks," I said, and I felt tears come to my eyes. Dad hugged me back, and I stepped back when he let me go.

"I don't...I feel like I don't deserve any of this though," I said, wiping my eyes.

"Why not?" Sam asked.

"Because of all the stuff I did-"

"No, that has nothing to do with what you deserve-" Dad interrupted me.

"No, _listen!"_ I said louder. "I did a lot of bad things! There's more that I haven't told you yet! And I want to talk about it, I'm ready to tell you now...and face the music," I said, and took a deep breath.

"All right," Dad said. "Do you want to go back to the living room and talk again?"

I nodded, and we all walked to the living room and sat down. Dad went and got Calvin, and Bobby came in behind him.

"Now listen, I know y'all may hear some upsetting stuff, but you need to remember that Aly needs to get this out, and she needs to feel safe while she's talkin', and she can't feel safe if she's scared of getting' yelled at." Calvin said, looking at my family.

Dean held his hand up. "I promise not to yell and be an ass."

Sam scoffed, and Dean gave him a little shove.

"All right," I said, and I took another deep breath. "Now I don't know where to start."

"When did you first notice your powers?" Sam asked me.

"It was after one of the first parties, and I had a hangover," I said.

Dean chuckled and shook his head.

"Meg wanted me to go to another party and I didn't want to, and we had an argument about it and I was mad...I threw my cup of coffee and then I remembered when I threw the mug when we were here, and somehow I just made it stop in mid-air. And then I got a migraine, it was horrible."

I looked over at Sam. "And then you and I connected, and I felt your presence," I took his hand and squeezed it and tears came to my eyes.

"I remember that, it was like one AM or something and I was the only one awake at the time...I thought I was losing my mind or something at first," Sam said with a smile.

"And then the next day you sent me that memory. I still had a headache, but I got up and went about my business. And I sent you some images...did you get them?"

"You were all dressed up and your face was all made up, you looked older," Sam said.

I felt my face get red. "Yeah, I was trying to...show off, I guess, show you that I was doing well without you..." I looked down at my lap.

"And then we actually connected, remember?" Sam asked me. "You were calling to me and I sent you the image of the ATM footage."

"Oh yeah..." I chuckled, and then I got serious. "And then...well... I went out with the girls for makeovers at the mall, and they... a couple of them decided to, you know, take some stuff and we got caught...we got separated, and I got shut in the manager's office to wait for the police, but I managed to unlock the door with my powers and sneak out-"

"So that _did_ happen." Sam looked at Dean. "Remember, Dad got sent that footage and we weren't sure-"

"Shoplifting _again_ , Aly?" Dean asked sternly, and I shrank down in the sofa, feeling my face get red again. I glanced at Sam and he had the same stern, annoyed look on his face that Dean had.

I felt a sudden rush of shame, because it brought back the time that I'd been caught with a friend who was shoplifting when I was younger. Dean had yelled at me because he'd had to bribe the store manager to take my name off of the police Winchesters and police don't mix, and he was worried they would run my name through their system and their records would show up. The night had ended with me getting a spanking, but also with the promise of a cell phone so I could call my brothers in the future if I ever got into a jam.

"What do you mean, _again?"_ Dad asked, and he looked stern as well. He looked from me, to Dean, and then to Sam. "Somebody want to fill me in?"

"Uh-" I started.

"A couple years ago, Aly got caught up at the mall with one of her friends who had sticky fingers." Dean said. _"She_ didn't steal anything, but the store manager nabbed all the girls- what was it, four of you?" he asked me, and I nodded. "I had to go down to the mall and do some sweet talking with the manager and I bribed him to take her name off of the report, because he had called the police."

Dad looked angry now. "Alyson was caught with a friend who was shoplifting and the police were called and none of you saw fit to mention this to me?" he barked.

"The police were called because this girl had done it before at that mall," Dean explained, trying to sound soothing. "There wasn't any chance of Aly getting in trouble."

"The hell there wasn't!" Dad said, folding his arms.

"Dad, Dean spanked me for it," I told him.

"We took care of it, so we figured we didn't need to let you know-" Sam said.

"What else happened that you all 'figured I didn't need to know about'?" Dad glowered at Sam and Dean. "How much are you hiding?"

"Dad, it's not like that!" I protested. "Dean-"

"Look, Dad, at that point you were out of the house more than you were home, and Sam and I were taking care of Aly a _lot._..and you and her were starting to, you know, not see eye-to-eye, and I figured that if I told you, you'd blow a gasket, and it would make things even more difficult between you two," Dean looked uncomfortable with this admission.

"So you took it upon yourself to decided that there were certain things about my daughter's behavior that I didn't need to know?" Dad asked tightly. "Who gave you that right?"

"You did, Dad," Sam sat up straight and leaned forward. _"You_ did, when you kept leaving to chase after that damn demon and were gone for weeks at a time. Remember? Remember when I left college and came back, how long you'd been gone at that point? And she had been having those nighma-"

"Oh, don't throw that in my face _again_ , Sam," Dad said in a bitter voice.

"Well, Dad, you asked who gave you the right, and Sam's right, you did, you gave me and Sammy the right, when you decided that hunting the fuglies was more important than raising your kids," Dean looked even more uncomfortable. "I mean, hell, I was there for a lot more of Aly's firsts than you were."

"All right, I don't think we're getting anywhere dredging up what sounds like ancient history. Y'all are movin' backwards instead of forwards," Calvin said.

"But this is stuff that needs to be said," Uncle Bobby said. "'Cause it's true, John did leave 'em to raise each other an awful lot, and it was for longer and longer times the older Aly got."

"Well, for God's sake, I would have appreciated if someone had told me that my kid was caught _shoplifting!"_ Dad snapped.

"And then what, Dad? You would have yelled and whipped Aly's butt and she'd be all hurt and pissed off at you even more than usual because you'd probably be out the door the next day. It was better to just not say anything. I took care of it, and we got her a cell phone so she could call us if anything like that happened again," Dean said.

Sam stood up suddenly. "And who the hell are _you_ to get on us about lying, when you've kept a _bunch_ of information from us over the years? You kept what you knew about that yellow-eyed bastard to _yourself_ , and maybe if you _hadn't_ , maybe if you'd been _honest_ with all of us from the beginning, we could have tried to- to fight against him, and keep a better watch out and protect Aly better! So in reality, all of this that's happened is _your_ fault!" Sam's voice was a loud yell by the end of this speech, and I shrank down into the sofa from the anger that was there.

Dad stood up and walked over to him, his face angry. "Don't raise your voice to me, boy!" he started low, but his voice was that deep growl that meant he was angry. I glanced at Dean, who had sat forward and tensed up.

"I did what I thought was right at the time!" Dad said. "I needed to protect you, _all_ of you, from the evil that was out there. It had come into our home and taken my _wife_ , your _mother,_ and I wasn't going to let it touch _any_ of you if I could help it. Once you were old enough I wanted to train you so that you'd be able to protect yourselves from things- and Dean just took to it like a duck takes to water, so I thought I should train him to work with me."

Sam made a scoffing sound. "And you dragged me into it too, even though I didn't want to."

"I wanted you to have training to protect-"

"It wasn't about protecting, it was about killing as many of the fuglies out there as possible so you could find the one that got Mom! You had your own little war to wage and you made us your little army, and now look, Aly's paid the price!" Sam gestured at me.

"What does that mean? There was no 'price' to be paid-"

"She got kidnapped by the same demon who killed Mom and he was gonna kill her too, Dad! He was gonna use her life force up and suck her dry! If we hadn't gotten there when we did-" Sam stopped and glanced at me.

I was staring up at him in horror, and then it was like a door opened in my mind, and memories started tumbling out-

 _Being strapped down to the altar and bled...seeing the scores of black-eyed people come into the room and realizing that they were all demons... hearing the chanting... feeling Azazel's power- and then-"_ _ **"Isn't it obvious? He needs your soul, Alyson. Your pure, untainted by sin, yet partially demon-tainted soul... While my blood ensures that your soul will recognize Lucifer's, the special abilities that you are hiding from us will give your soul almost unlimited energy. When it is time for Him to return to us, your soul will give Him the power He needs to do so. Of course, the way we'll need to remove it means your body will be obliterated. It'll be like you never existed, Alyson. A little side effect that I'm sure your family will secretly be happy about."**_

Azazel's words came back to me, and I felt fully the terror and betrayal and anguish that I had not allowed myself to feel back then. I had had to detach from my emotions to just get through what was happening, I didn't have time to feel the feelings because I was focused on trying to stay alive.

"I had no control over Aly, she ran away!" Dad was saying to Sam. "I couldn't have predicted any of what happened-"

"But if you had been honest and told her what was _really_ out there, what was _really a_ fter her, then she could have been more aware of things and kept herself safer-"

"Sam, you _know_ I tried to train her, but she wasn't-" Dad interrupted Sam and Sam talked over him-

"I'm not talking about training, I'm talking about telling her- _communicating_ with her instead of barking orders all the time and expecting them to be obeyed-"

"Oh, now we're back to that-" Dad huffed angrily.

Dean sprang up and stepped between Sam and Dad, holding his hands up like he used to when I was a kid. "Hey, hey, let's cool it-" he started, trying to defuse the tension in the situation.

I had started to curl up into a ball and rock back and forth. This was all too much, feeling all the emotions I had held inside, and now hearing my brother and father shouting at each other, their long held-feelings finally coming to the surface-

I couldn't deal with it any more. I jumped up and I ran. Somehow I found myself at the front door and I twisted the deadbolt and yanked the door open, and then I was running- running up the road, away from everything, away from my past, from my family, from all the pain and fear and betrayal and secrets-


	8. Chapter 8

**CONTENT WARNING: MINOR DESCRIPTION AND DISCUSSION OF SELF-INJURY (CUTTING) IN THIS CHAPTER. PLEASE USE CAUTION AND _DO NOT READ_ IF THIS WILL _TRIGGER_ YOU! **

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

Calvin's "office phone" rang- the line that was for the 'medical wing' of the house.

"Dr. Hobbson," Calvin answered smoothly.

"Calvin," said Jesse, "I think I got one a' yer patients here, a young girl, she's actin' kinda- well, she's actin' kinda off-"

"Aly," Calvin sighed with relief, glancing at John and Bobby. "How is she actin'?"

"Like...like, well, uh..." Jesse's thought processes were as slow as his way of speaking. "Like she's a... kid? I mean...a little kid, ya know?"

"Is she okay? I mean, not injured?" Calvin asked.

"Not far's I can tell. Well, she's got skinned knees, I think she fell, and she's kinda dirty, but she's okay. She's havin' a glass o' fresh milk an' cookies."

"Where did you find her?"

"I's outside workin' on the tractor an' she jus' up an' come wanderin' outta the corn field, not knowin' where she was," Jesse drawled.

"All right, we'll be right over," Calvin told him.

"Uhh- she dangerous? She ain't gonna cut all our throats 'r nothin', is she?"

Calvin chuckled. "No, she won't do anything like that at all. Just keep feeding her cookies." He hung the phone up and looked at the men. "She's at the farm next door, Jesse told me that she wandered out of the cornfield. She must've run in there and gotten lost. That's why it seemed like she up and disappeared, because she's shorter than the corn stalks right now!"

"Well, let's go," John said.

"I'll call the boys and let 'em know," Bobby said. Sam and Dean had each taken a vehicle and driven in opposite directions to try and search for Aly. They had run after her, but by the time they got outside and down the road, it was as if she had disappeared.

Calvin walked to the door and took the keys that hung from a small rack of hooks. John followed him, and they walked to Calvin's truck.

"Jesse's been my neighbor nigh on 30 years," Calvin told John, "He's seen all kinds of things comin' and goin' from here, and never bats an eye," Calvin chuckled again, "the man could meet up with the devil himself and stay calm. He knows to call me, sometimes someone'll wander away when they're here gettin' treatment for somethin'."

"Thank God," John said, "Does he know about-"

Calvin nodded. "He does, he don't understand it all but he knows about the life. He's a good guy, make a hell of a hunter. But he prefers to farm, and he's good at that too. That's where I get my eggs from."

Calvin turned into a long dirt lane that had a couple of slow curves in it, and then there was a large, old farmhouse with a wide open front yard. Calvin parked in the yard, and they got out and walked up the porch steps. Jesse met them at the screen door and ushered them in through the living room. He was an older, rotund man wearing faded denim overalls, with salt and pepper hair and a cap on his head.

"She's in here with Alma," Jesse told them. Alma was Jesse's wife, a plump redhead.

Alma was standing by the stove, wearing an apron, with a dishtowel hung over her shoulder.

She was smiling as she watched Aly.

Aly was sitting at the wide kitchen table, playing with a small piece of pie dough, rolling it like it was play-dough.

Alma looked at Calvin and John. "Today is pie day, and I was rolling out my dough. She asked if she could help, but I think she's having more fun playing with it."

"Oh, I forgot about your pies, Alma," Calvin said, "I'll have to ask you to send me a couple over, we've got a house guest who loves pie."

Aly looked up at them and her face brightened when she saw John. There was dirt across the front and the arms of her hoodie, and some on her face. There were very clear tear tracks amid the dirt on her cheeks

She held up the dough. "Wook, Daddy, I'm pwayin' wif dough!" she said brightly. Her voice sounded like that of a much younger child.

"I see that, Pumpkin," John said to her. "Are you ready to go?"

Aly appeared to think for a minute. "Okay," she agreed. She moved the chair back and gestured to her legs. "I gotted owies on my knees," she said mournfully, "I falled down."

John walked over to her and saw that her pants were dirty and ripped at both knees, and there was dried blood on the fabric.

"She wouldn't let either of us touch them," Alma told him. "Said her doctor friend would fix her. We knew right then who to call."

"She ain't all there, is she?" Jesse asked, "Simple-like, in the head?"

Calvin glanced at him. "No, it's..called age regression. She's dealing with some difficult... issues and she can't handle it, so she's reverted to a child-like state," he explained.

"Huh," Jesse grunted. "Never heard tell o' it."

"Must be that new-fangled psych-ology," Alma said. "Well, whatever it is, she's a sweetheart," she beamed at John. "Just as polite as can be!"

John squatted down in front of Aly and moved the fabric over to check how bad the injuries were. Aly winced.

She looked up at him with an ashamed look on her face. "I wipped-ed my pants, Daddy, sowwy," she said, and a finger crept to the corner of her mouth.

"It's all right, sweetheart," he said, "I'm just glad you're okay. You had us worried."

Aly began to cry. "I—I was bad! I wunned away!" she wailed. "I gonna be in twoubul!"

"Shh, no, don't worry about that," John stood up and leaned over, hugging her. "Let's get you back to Calvin's and then we'll talk about it."

Aly nodded and wiped her face, sniffling. She looked up at John with wide eyes.

"You mean- a-a talk a'tween you hand, an', an' my butt?" she asked in a stage whisper, repeating a phrase that John had said to all three of his children more than once.

John stood up as he heard stifled laughter and felt the corners of his lips twitch.

"No, sweetheart," he held his hand out. "Let's go."

She stood up and took his hand. Alma turned and handed Aly a plastic ziploc bag full of cookies.

"Don't forget these, darlin'." she said. She stepped over to the other counter and handed Calvin a plastic bag full of ears of corn.

"Fank you Miss Awma. An' fank you for da cookies 'n milk!" Aly said.

John and Aly followed Calvin out to the truck. John had to help Aly climb into the truck, as it was a large one like his, high off of the ground.

"Daddy, I can't do it," she pulled on the seat belt, so he buckled her in. He turned to look at her as they drove back to Calvin's house.

Aly's face looked younger, rounder, more—innocent somehow, the hunted, sad look she wore so often recently wasn't there, instead she looked calm and happy.

Calvin pulled into the driveway. The Impala and John's truck were also parked there, so that meant that both boys were back. As they got out, the front door opened and they came out onto the porch. Dean looked angry.

Aly swung her feet out of the truck and saw her brothers. She held up the bag in her hand. "Wook Sammy, we gots cookies!" she called happily.

She looked down at the ground, and appeared to be afraid to try and get out of the truck on her own.

"Daddy," she called, holding her arms out. John turned and put his hands around her waist, lifting her out of the seat and placing her on the ground. He closed the door as she waited next to him, then she slipped her hand into his. They walked up the stairs together.

Dean was openly staring. "What the hell is this?" he asked Sam in a side-mouthed whisper.

"How's it going?" Sam asked, keeping his voice light.

"I wunned in da corn but I falled an' gots owies on my knees," Aly told him. She looked up at him. "You tall, Sammy."

He chuckled. "Yeah, I am tall," he said. He looked over at John and Calvin, raising his eyebrows.

"Regression," Calvin mouthed.

Sam nodded. "Let's go inside and fix up those owies of yours, huh?"

Aly had looked around Sam's shoulder and seen her other brother.

"Dean!" She crowed happily, dropping John's hand and running over to him. She threw her arms around him and he stepped back slightly.

"Hey, kiddo," he said, and put his arms around her. He felt uncomfortable and unsure of how to deal with her.

Aly let go of him and grinned up at him, then went back to John's side and took his hand again. They walked into the kitchen.

"Sit down here and I'll get the med kit," Sam told Aly. She put the bag of cookies on the table, and then stripped off her pants and dropped them on the floor next to the table, plunking herself down in a chair.

"Whoa, uhh-" Dean said uncomfortably.

"What, Dean?" Sam said quietly, "Just treat her like she's about 4 years old or so."

"Yeah, but her body's not!" Dean hissed. "She's gonna be really embarrassed later when we tell her she took her pants off in front of everyone."

"She'll get over it, I think," Sam said. "Relax."

He walked into the bathroom that was just down the hall to get the First Aid kit that was stored in there. When he came back into the room, Aly was opening the plastic bag.

She looked up at John. "Daddy, can I has a cookie?" she asked.

"How many did you have before?" he asked her.

"Uhh..." her brows knit together as she thought about it. Then she held up her hand with her fingers spread out. "Dis many."

"Five?" John asked.

"I fink so. Maybe mowe," She held the bag up to him. "Wan' one?"

John took the bag and took two out. He handed her one. "You can have one more right now, but you need to save room for lunch," he told her.

"Okay, Daddy," she said.

Sam set the box on the table and opened it. Calvin came into the room with a damp washcloth and towels and handed them to Sam so that he could clean off Aly's knees. Sam pulled a chair over and sat in front of Aly, leaning over and wiping the dirt and drid blood off. She winced and sucked in a breath.

"Ooh, Sammy, dat huuuuuwts!" she whimpered. John walked to her side and took her hand. "Hold my hand and squeeze it if you want," he told her.

"Owieeee," she whined, and she wrapped her arms around John's waist and buried her head in his side. He stroked her hair and murmured soothingly to her while Sam cleaned off her knees and then applied antibiotic ointment and bandages.

Aly shifted at one point and loosened her arms. John glanced down and then stared- Aly's sleeve had gotten pulled back and there was a red mark on the skin of her inner arm. He tried to pull the fabric up more but she tightened her arms again and he couldn't. If that was what he thought it was, then they needed to have a serious talk with her.

Sam crumpled the paper wrappers of the gauze pads into a ball and put them on the table.

"All done," he said, sitting up and smiling at Aly. "You did a great job being brave, Aly."

She let go of John's waist and sat back, smiling at her brother. Then she looked up at John again. "Can I has 'novver cookie 'cause I good?" she asked.

Sam laughed. John reached down and took Aly's wrist, lifting her arm up, and then with his other hand began to pull the sleeve up towards the elbow. Aly gasped and pulled her arm away, ducking her head.

Sam caught a glimpse of angry, reddened skin, and looked up at John. John shook his head slightly. "Aly, we need to see your arms," John said.

She shook her head. "Nooo!" she whined. She brought her arms up to her chest and clasped her hands together tightly under her chin. "Can't see!"

Sam reached for her wrist. "Come on, honey, let me have a lo-"

 _"No!"_ she shouted, turning towards the table.

"Aly, " John said patiently. "We need to check and make sure you're not injured anywhere else. If you have any- any other owies that need band-aids, we need to know so we can take care of them."

Aly shook her head vigourously back and forth. "Uh- _uh!"_ she stomped her foot on the floor.

"Alyson Elisabeth, you will let me see your arms _right now,_ or I will put you over my knee," John said in a deep, stern voice.

Aly whimpered once, and then lowered her arms and unclasped her hands. She put them in her lap and sat with her shoulders slumped. John picked up her wrist again and drew the sleeve back. There were bright red lines and scrapes all along the inside of her forearm, but there were only dots of blood where the skin had been broken in a couple of places.

Sam noticed Aly's shoulders shake and looked at her. Her eyes were closed and tears were dripping out of the corners.

John put that arm down and then did the same thing, lifting her other wrist and pulling the sleeve up. This arm was worse- she had broken the skin twice, and two thin lines of scabbed-over skin went almost to the inside of her elbow. There were some scratches that didn't break the skin too.

"What did you do this with?" John asked, his voice still stern.

"Piece of gwass," Aly mumbled.

"Where did you get it?" Sam asked calmly.

"Foun' it onna gwoun'," she said, and pushed at her pants on the floor with her foot. "It's inna pocket."

John bent down, picked up the pants, and fished around in the pockets, and then brought out a jagged triangular piece of clear glass, about three inches long, There was blood at the one tip.

"Where was it?" John questioned Aly.

"Inna corn," she said, "wots of twass onna gwoun'."

Sam leaned over and picked up the bottle of peroxide. "I don't think they need to be bandaged, but they do need to be cleaned," he said.

"I want them cleaned, and then antibiotic ointment put on and bandages overnight," John told him. "It will help the raw skin heal up."

"All right, Dad," Sam said. He unzipped Aly's hoodie and helped her take it off so he could work on her arms.

"Why did you do this, Aly?" Dean stepped forward, and she glanced at him with tears in her eyes.

"Too muts pain," Aly said quietly. "Too muts eve'yfing."

"Your rear end is going to have 'too much pain' if you pull a stunt like this again," John said angrily, "You do _not_ run away any more, do you understand?"

Aly's shoulders slumped even further. "Y-yes, Daddy," she whimpered, "I s-sowwy."

"Dad, I don't think it was a conscious thing," Sam looked up at John. "She just- got up and ran blindly, did you notice? She must have just run without looking where she was going, really."

"I don't want her to run again, Sam, she can't get used to doing that," John said.

"I wunned an' wunned an twipped onna big piece 'a wood in da corn," she said. "and I sat an' cwied, den I got up an walkeded,"

"When did you cut yourself?" Sam asked patiently.

"When I's cwyin'," she replied quietly.

Calvin walked over to the table. "Aly, are you hungry for lunch? What do you like to eat?"

"Um, P B an' J," she told him, "Dean make it goodest."

"Triangles, no crust, white bread if you have it," Dean said automatically. "Geez, how'd I remember that?"

Sam looked up at him. "She still eats them, doesn't she?"

"Well...she hasn't in a couple years. At least, she hasn't asked me to make her one," Dean said. "She's been cooking for us for the past, what, 3 or 4 years?"

"Yeah, she started when she was 11?" Sam said.

Aly looked at him. "I not 'leven!" she said with a grin.

"Okay, Miss Smarty, how old are you then?" Sam asked her.

In response, she held up 4 fingers.

"Well, you're very brave for 4 years old," Sam told her. "I'm all done now," he put one last piece of tape on her wrist. She had white gauze pads taped to the inside of her forearms and wrists.

"John, we should talk," Calvin said.

"I know," John sighed. He looked at Aly. "After lunch, it's time for-"

Aly frowned. "No nap!" she complained.

"Yes, little girl," John told her. "That's the way it is, isn't it, on days you don't have preschool?"

"Yeah," she said. "Sammy way wif me?" she looked at Sam hopefully.

"Oh," Sam remembered what she was talking about. "Sure, I'll lay with you," he agreed. When Aly was younger she hated taking naps and Sam would often lay with her until she fell asleep. He was the only one who had the patience to do so.

Calvin made sandwiches for everyone and they sat and ate with a minimum of talk. They were all trying to watch Aly without appearing to. She acted as if she didn't notice.

She finished her sandwich quickly. Sam ate a couple more bites of his, and then stood up.

"Come on," he said to stood up and took his hand. As they walked to her room, Sam said, "You should try and go potty before you lay down."

He was surprised at how easily that old routine had come back to him. She went to the bathroom- she was able to navigate that process on her own, thank goodness- and then appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. Sam had gotten out a pair of jeans for her.

"Let's put these on," he told her.

" 'Kay," she said agreeably. She walked over to him and he helped her step into them, pull them up, and then through force of habit he zipped and buttoned them just as he had when she was actually 4 years old.

She was staring at the mobile. "Sammy, can I touts it?" she asked.

"Sure," he said. They had hung it over her bed. He helped her stand up on the bed and held her hand to help her balance, and she gently touched each of the stars and moons and made them spin slowly.

"Come on, let's lay down," he said. She sat down and then he helped her get under the covers. He sat up next to her, propped against the headboard, and after a moment, she moved over and slid her arm around his stomach, snuggling into his side. He put his arm around her shoulder. She closed her eyes, and sighed deeply.

Then she began to talk to him. She began to tell him about what had happened, how they had tried to force her to use her powers by throwing things at her, how she had been locked in a small room as punishment, how Meg had been tortured in front of her. As Aly spoke in the halting speech of a four-year-old, images began to filter into Sam's mind from Aly, and he relaxed and let them enter in, so that he could fully absorb them and recall everything to tell the others later. She showed him everything that had happened before they got there. Eventually, Aly shifted, and her body shuddered, and then she curled up and began to cry quietly. Sam pulled her into his arms as harsh sobs wracked her body.

She began to speak in her regular voice, and he knew that her age regression was over for now. "I was so scared...I thought I was gonna die...I wondered if I'd ever see any of you again...he had me convinced that you'd kill me, that you didn't want me...that I belonged with him...but I knew it wasn't true...it hurt so much when I found out...I thought they loved me...she hated me...said they all did...I didn't know what to do...if I should show them my powers or not...can't do this...can't live with this..."

"Can't live with what, Aly?" Sam asked her. She put her head up and looked at him, eyes still streaming with tears.

"With everything I did! I'm a horrible person..."

"No, you're not, shh..." Sam put his hand on her head and guided her head back down onto his chest. "Go ahead and cry. Get it all out," he said. She wept for a long time, and then quieted to sniffles, and then eventually she relaxed, until her chest hitched every so often. Her breathing evened out and Sam knew she was asleep. He eased her down onto the bed and got up, grabbing some tissues and wiping her face off gently. Then he sat back down next to her and stroked her hair for a while, thinking about everything that she had shown him.


	9. Chapter 9

**CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SELF-INJURY (CUTTING)-** _ **USE CAUTION**_ **IF THIS WILL TRIGGER YOU.**

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

Sam looked down at Aly laying in the bed next to him. She had been deeply asleep for a few hours now, and he could smell dinner-smells wafting down the hallway. His stomach rumbled with hunger- he hadn't gotten to finish his lunch, and he had stayed with Aly while she was talking and crying.

Aly stirred in the bed next to him and then opened her eyes. She looked up at him, blinking slowly, and then sat up, registering that she was now wearing jeans and had white bandages along the insides of her forearms. She glanced at Sam again, looking guilty, and then burst into tears.

"Hey, hey," Sam said gently, putting his laptop on the ground next to the bed. He turned to her and pulled her into his arms again.

She grabbed ahold of him tightly and gripped the back of his shirt, pressing her face into his chest and sobbing. "I'm sorry, Sam," she said, "I'm s-sorry I r-ran away and I c-cut mys-self." She lowered her head as if she was ashamed.

"I understand why you ran, things were getting pretty intense in here," Sam told her, "But why the cutting?"

She sobbed for a couple more minutes and then began to try and get her breathing under control. "I—I j-just feel, that I can't—can't han-handle this any m-more," she said haltingly, "E-every time I -t-try to t-talk about things, we all end up in- in a big argument."

"I know," Sam said, "All of us have a lot that needs to be talked out."

"Well it's t-too mu-much," she sobbed, "It makes me f-feel like it's all m-my f-fault."

"It's not, though, you know that, right?"

She shook her head. "I r-ran away and did all th-those bad th-things and now I r-ran away again," she said, "I j-just felt like there was s-so mu-much pain, I w-wanted to g-get it out."

"So that's why you cut yourself? To help the pain get out?" Sam asked.

Aly nodded, her head pressed against his chest.

"Well, you don't have to do that anymore, okay? We'll figure out some better ways to help you deal with the pain," he told her.

"S-sam, w-will you talk to ev-everyone? And tell them wh-what I sh-showed you?"

He looked down at her. "You remember?"

She nodded again. "Kinda. I started to remember wh-when I was talking to you and sending you wh-what happened."

"But you don't remember before that?"

"Just r-running into the corn field and falling over a b-big log. I hurt my knees and started to c-cry and then I looked around and f-found a p-piece of glass and I...I cut myself. Then I don't remember anything after that. I was crying hard."

"You age regressed to about 4 years old, ran through the corn to the farm next-door, and they brought you into their house and gave you cookies. They called Calvin and he and Dad went to get you. You ripped your pants up, when you fell, I guess. When you guys came back, I told you I'd fix up your knees and you just took your pants off right there in the kitchen, and sat down."

"Oh," she said.

"Dean didn't know how to handle you, and he was concerned that you'd be embarrassed," Sam told her with a chuckle. She shrugged.

"I bandaged your knees and Dad noticed the scrapes on your arms and asked you about it...you wouldn't let him see at first and he had to threaten you with a spanking, then I bandaged them too. We ate lunch and Dad said you had to take a nap after, and you asked if I'd lay with you. It's funny how quickly the old routine of getting you to bed came back to me," Sam chuckled again, "Then you started to tell me what happened, and then show me, and then you cried for a long time, and then you started talking again and it was you."

Sam looked down at her. "You know, I felt it- when they first revealed themselves to you, all the anguish and desparation and terror that you were feeling- and I almost fainted. Dean thought I was having a stroke. And then you started sending me images, right? I kept seeing that one kid, Glenn? And I was able to find a police sketch artist and have them draw him, and then we found him in the DMV database and that's how we were able to pinpoint where you were."

"It is?" Aly asked.

"Yeah...so your powers helped us find you...and you helped save yourself too."

Aly tightened her arms around Sam and he hugged her back. They sat that way for a while, and then someone knocked on the doorjamb. They turned towards the door and saw Dean standing there.

"Uh, Aly?" Dean said uncertainly.

"I'm here, Dean," Aly said, "I'm not going to be taking my clothes off again any time soon."

Dean relaxed and smiled. "Good. Dinner's just about on the table. How are you feeling?"

"Like I'm...numb," Aly told him, "Empty. Drained. Tired."

"Well, you cried for a long time before," Sam said, "That's probably why you feel like that."

"You gonne be okay?" Dean asked gently.

Aly shrugged. "I need to go to the bathroom, I'll meet you guys in the kitchen," she said. After she left the room, Sam stood up and Dean walked over to him.

"How is she really, man?" Dean asked Sam quietly.

"She showed me what happened, I mean the things they were doing to her before we got there. She doesn't want to talk about it any more, says it's too much. She feels like everything is her fault and then when we end up arguing it makes her feel worse," Sam told him.

Dean glanced at the doorway. "Well, there's a lot of history we've got to get through," he said with a grimace.

"I know, but to keep bringing things up from the past and arguing about it isn't good for her right now. She asked me to tell everyone about what happened to her. She doesn't want to," Sam said.

"Maybe that's for the best," Dean said.

~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~ spn ~ ~

I came into the kitchen right behind my brothers. Dad was standing by the table facing the counter and Uncle Bobby and Calvin were over at the stove. Everyone turned to look at me when I came in.

"It's me," I said, "I'm...back, I guess? Hi Daddy," I felt a moment of surprise that it felt natural to say that to him, even though I hadn't called him that in at least a couple of years.

Dad put the napkins he was holding on the table and spoke to me. "Alyson Elisabeth, you run again, and my belt comes off," he said, and his voice was almost the deep growl that he got when he was really angry. My mouth went dry.

Calvin turned from the stove. "John, didn't we talk-"

Dad held up his hand. "Calvin, I know what we talked about, but _dammit_ , I feel like if I don't lay down the law with her it's just going to happen again. And it _better not,"_ Dad gave me the Winchester Glare. "The cutting, I'll be honest, I don't understand it, but we can talk about and deal with it. But there will be _NO-MORE-RUNNING-_ \- is that clear?"

I gulped. "Y-yes s-sir," I said shakily.

"In fact, I'm wondering if I shouldn't just whip your butt for everything you did before, and that will serve as a reminder not to do it again," Dad put his hands on his hips.

Sam took a step towards the table. "Geez Dad, way to call Aly out in front of everyone," he said angrily, "Don't you think it would have been better to talk about this with her in private, instead of right her, in front of everyone? She's not a little kid-"

Dad interrupted him. "Sam, I don't need you telling me how to parent-"

"I'm _NOT_ , I just think-"

"STOP IT!" I yelled over both of their voices. Sam turned to look at me. "We're not talking about any of it any more. I showed Sam what—what happened to me, and he can tell you. I don't—I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to keep sitting down and bringing up stuff from the past. I can't—I can't do it any more. Can we please just- I don't know, try to be, like, regular people for a while? I mean, I know we're not, but, can we stop re-hashing everything? It's not- it feels like it's not helping."

Everyone looked at each other.

"Well, I'll admit, I didn't think about it that way, but maybe we should give it a try," Calvin said. "But you tell us if you need to talk, about anything, hear?" he looked at me.

"I will," I agreed.

Dad came over to me and stood looking down at me. His eyes were sad. "Aly, I don't mean to be harsh," he said hoarsely, "but I don't want to lose you again. I _can't_ lose you again. We'll work all of this out, but you need to stay here and not run any more." He pulled me into a hug for a long moment.

"Okay, Daddy," I whispered, "I'm sorry I ran again. You- you should punish me for it."

He pulled back and looked me in the eyes. "No, sweetheart, not now. We'll deal with all that later." He led me over to the table and I sat down.

Uncle Bobby and Dad started to bring dishes of food over to the table. The rest of them sat down.

"Dean, we should be getting a couple pies from my neighbor in a day or so," Calvin told him, "His wife does a lot of baking and I asked her to send some over."

"Sounds great," Dean said.

"Well, Aly, do you want to try to pick up home-schooling again?" Sam looked at me.

"Sure," I agreed, "It'll give me something to do, and I promise I'll do my best." I smiled at him.

"I've got everything in the trunk still packed away," Sam said, "I'll get it out later tonight."

After we ate, I helped Dean clear the table and load the dish washer.

Sam came into the kitchen. "I got all your school books out if you want to take a look," he told me, "In the library."

I followed him into the library and we sat down at the desk I had sat at months ago when we'd been here before. I felt a pang of nervousness and sorrow, remembering all the stress and upset we had gone through with the home-schooling.

Sam was flipping through one of the textbooks. "I think we had left off in this unit-" he was saying, and then he looked at me. "What's wrong, Aly?" he asked with concern.

I felt my eyes fill with tears and I looked at him. "Sam, I'm sorry about before. I wasn't- I didn't—I screwed up, I know, and I-"

"Hey, shh, stop it." he said gently, "We already talked about it, and you've already apologized. Let it go, okay? I'm not upset about it any more." He smiled at me and put his hand on mine. "Okay?"

I nodded and took a deep breath. "Okay, Sam." I agreed. I listened to him as he talked to me and went through all of the books, figuring out where we had left off before.

"Sam," I said hesitantly, "I'm going to need- extra help with the algebra, I really didn't understand it-"

He looked guilty. "I know, Aly. I didn't- I wasn't listening to you before, I had my own agenda. We'll work on it together this time, and I won't get mad at you." he smiled at me again.

He picked up a paperback. "Did you ever finish reading Emma?" he asked.

"Uhh, I can't even remember," I said, "Maybe I should watch it again to refresh my memory." I teased.

"Well, all right," Sam said, "Dean, you up for a costume drama tonight?"

"If it's got lotsa low cut dresses and cleavage, I'm in!" Dean smirked.

After we finished watching the movie, I got ready for bed and then went to my room. I had just sat down on my bed when there was a knock on the door.

Dad came into the room and approached the bed slowly. "Is it- is it okay if I, you know, tuck you in?" he asked, almost shyly.

"Uh, sure," I said, feeling a little uncomfortable. I got under the covers and he came over and sat down on the edge of the bed. He took one of my arms and straightened it, turning it and looking at the scrapes. Sam had removed the bandages and then cleaned the wounds, and rubbed some antibiotic ointment in.

I started to pull away, feeling a nervous pang, and afraid that he was going to start scolding me again. After a moment, he let my arm go, and then looked at me.

"Aly, can I ask you something?" he said quietly.

"Sure," I said slowly.

"Can you, uh, explain...this...to me?" he gestured to my arms, "Because like I said, I don't understand it, and I want to understand it, and you. I want to know why you did it and try to make it so that you don't do it again, I don't want you to hurt yourself."

I took a deep breath and stared down at the blanket. "I just felt...like there was too much pain." I sighed, even though I didn't feel much of anything at the moment. "Every time we start talking, everyone gets so angry, and it's upsetting, and there's so much already in here," I put my hand on my chest. "It just gets to feeling overwhelming, and I felt like...it seemed like the only way I could get it out was by doing something like that- like cutting."

"Have you, uh, have you done that before?"

I shook my head. "No. There was a girl in chorus who did and sometimes she'd talk about it after rehearsals."

"Is that where you got the idea from?"

"No, Dad, I wasn't copying her!"

"I'm not saying that. I just wondered, because it's not something I'd ever think that you would do. You've always been cautious around weapons."

"Well, I didn't use a weapon, I used a broken piece of glass."

He grimaced. "I know. Just...please, if you start to feel that way again, like it's too much, don't...don't do that, don't hurt yourself again. Talk to someone, let someone know. And find something else to do, rip up a piece of paper or scream into a pillow or something, you know? Will you promise me that?"

"Okay, Dad," I agreed.

He pulled me into a tight hug. "I don't want to lose you, sweetheart, to anything, and I don't like knowing that you hurt yourself."

"I'm sor-"

"I'm not saying it so that you'll apologize. I just want you to know that. Okay?"

"Okay." I repeated.

"I'm trying to change, Aly, to make things better. I know I can't change the past, but I can make changes now and that will change the future." He squeezed me and let me go, and looked me in the eyes. "I'm so glad that you're here with us and that you're safe," he told me, and it looked like tears came to his eyes for a couple seconds.

There was a knock on the doorjamb, and my brothers came into the room.

"We wanted to say goodnight," Dean said as they walked over to the bed.

All of a sudden there was a loud rushing sound, the sound of wings flapping, and then the angel was standing there in front of us.

"Winchesters, I must speak with you," Castiel said, "I have been trying to discover why I was not able to completely remove Alyson's powers."

"And-?" Dean asked.

"In the bloodline of your family there was an ancestor who had powers, which have subsequently been diluted with each passing generation."

"Why haven't I ever heard of this?" Dad asked, standing up.

Castiel looked at him. "It is in your wife's lineage," he said, "It was so long ago that they may not even have known. I had to search for a long time, to discover what the truth was."

"So, what is the truth?" Dean asked impatiently, "Lay it on us."

"Long ago, there was a warlock who had somehow mananged to capture an angel. The how of it is not clear. A wise woman- healer fought the warlock, and managed to free the angel, but in the process, she was gravely injured. The angel gave her some blood to restore her, and it gave her powers. She became a powerful witch."

"Aw, man, we're related to witches? I freakin' hate witches!" Dean said.

"Shh," Sam bumped Dean's elbow with his.

Castiel continued like Dean and Sam hadn't even spoken, "The child that she bore after that became a powerful wise woman of her village. Each subsequent generation after that had less and less power."

"There should be records of this somewhere, right?" Sam asked, "The relatives, I mean, if this is the Campbell line, it's got to be Scotland, right?"

"That is correct, Sam," Castiel said.

"Why was this so hard for you to find?" Dad asked him.

"Because the archangels do not like to admit that there have been times when angels have been helped by humans. They want to be seen as infallible. The records were...somewhat hidden."

"So what does that mean for Aly?" Dean asked, "What does this little history lesson have to do with her? Or any of us, for that matter."

"Are you aware of what Azazel was trying to do?" Castiel asked, "Alyson's soul is very powerful, because it is so pure. She is from a long line of hunters but because she is not a hunter, her soul was never exposed to the evil and pain that hunters become exposed to. He was trying to harness her powers to use her as a 'battery', to power the ritual that was to bring Lucifer onto the earth, and into Sam's body.

Once Alyson's powers were used, her spirit would have been obliterated. He recognized the power she had in her soul, and had a team of witches performing a spell to bring her abilities to fruition and also strengthen them. This spell had the affect of waking the dormant ancestral powers in her blood, and Sam's as well. That is why her abilities cannot be removed, but are instead very weak. That is why both Alyson and Sam can still communicate telepathically."

"So, now what?" Sam asked. "Do we train Aly to control her powers? Is she going to have to stay hidden for the rest of her life?"

"No," Castiel said. "We are still blocking her powers. We are still trying to discover if there are ways to remove them completely. I will be serving as Alyson's guardian angel."

"Oh great, we get the angel in the trench coat," Dean said sarcastically.

Now Dad knocked Dean's elbow. "Be respectful, Dean," he scolded.

"How will you guard me?" I asked. "Does that mean I can go outside now? Can I go places?"

"You would do well to learn some self defense and warding against demons before you go anywhere."

Castiel produced a scroll of parchment and handed it to Dad. "These should be memorized by all of you- a prayer of protection and a warding to detect if there is evil present."

"Thank you," Dad said to him.

Castiel looked at us. "I will return when I have news," and then in the blink of an eye he was gone.

Dad unrolled the scroll. The prayers were written in such ornate calligraphy that it was hard to read the words. He showed it to Sam. "Think you can figure this out?" he asked.

Sam glanced over it. "I think so," he said. "I want to see if I can find these Campbell ancestors that he mentioned too, there should be records somewhere. A lot of genealogy information is online these days."

Dad looked down at me. "Are you all right, Aly?" he asked.

"Yeah," I nodded, "It- it's kindof nice to know that I have a guardian angel."

Dean scoffed. "Yeah, we'll see," he said skeptically.

"Come on, dude, he's an angel, the way he looks has nothing to do with what kind of powers he has," Sam told him.

"And if we were to ever look at him in his true form, we'd probably end up dead or something," Dad said, "Angels have to use a vessel to interact with humans, so that their angelic glory doesn't get revealed."

" 'Angelic Glory'?" Dean's voice was sarcastic.

"There are stories of people's eyes being burned out, or losing their sanity, because an angel showed them their true self. It's not something to joke about, Dean," Dad said seriously. He looked down at me. "We'll get this prayer translated and written out so that we can all start memorizing it, and I have some other things I want you to memorize as well."

"Okay, Dad," I said. He leaned down to hug me, and kissed the top of my head. Sam and Dean stepped over to the bed and did the same, and then they left the room after Dad turned on the night light.

I laid in bed and thought about what Castiel had said. If the angels couldn't figure out how to remove my powers, would I have them forever? Did that mean that there would always be demons after me, trying to kidnap me to use those powers?

Maybe I _should_ become a hunter like my family, so that I could defend myself, and maybe I could learn to use my powers to defeat demons. I didn't want to hide away at Calvin's for the rest of my life. Meg was still out there, and I didn't know if she was looking for me. The thought of seeing her again made me feel nervous, so I tried to stop thinking about her as I fell asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

We were all in Calvin's library. Sam had spent the morning going over my home-schooling work with me, he had figured out where we had stopped, and had worked out what the units of curriculum should be. I had an English assignment and a Math assignment and a Social Studies assignment to get through, and then he had handed me a paper with the Latin prayer that Castiel had given him. He had typed it out and made copies for everyone to memorize.

Sam and Dad were on computers trying to look up geneaolgy stuff to find out about our ancestors, and Dean was looking something else up. I tried to do my work, but I couldn't concentrate.

Sam came over to me and stood by the desk. "Let me hear it," he said, "Have you worked on the prayer at all?"

"Uh..." I shuffled the papers that were on the desk.

Sam looked at me, raising his eyebrows. "Have you even started memorizing yet?"

I looked down at the desk, blushing. "Um...no."

Sam leaned toward me slightly, and his hazel eyes were intense.

"We're not going to start this again," he said sternly, "You need to learn this, Aly, because this could be a matter of life and death in the future!"

I looked up at him looming over me, and I shrank down. I remembered before I ran away, how angry he had gotten about my schoolwork.

"Please, Sam!" I said, tears coming to my eyes, "I didn't- I mean, I'm not-"

"Not what? Not slacking off like you were before?" His voice was hard, "I looked over here from time to time and I didn't see you doing much work- you're doing a lot of staring off into space again."

"No!" I said, feeling nervous, "I'm _not_ slacking off! I can't- I can't-" I hesitated, not sure if he would believe me.

Dad had come over and was standing next to Sam.

"What's going on?" he asked, looking from Sam to me.

"She hasn't even _tried_ to start memorizing anything, or doing much of her school work," Sam said angrily.

I looked up at both of them. "I _did_ try," I whispered, "Something's wrong with me. I- I can't read, when I try to it's like, it doesn't make sense, and sometimes the letters get all tangled up, and I can't concentrate for very long. And the prayer being in Latin makes it even harder."

I bowed my head and closed my eyes, waiting for them to get angry and accuse me of lying to get out of it.

When I opened my eyes, Dad had led Sam away from the table and was talking with him for a couple of minutes. Then they came back over to me.

"What's happening to you is normal for PTSD," Dad told me, "I'm not sure why it happens, but it does sometimes. It will get better eventually. I had the same problem when I came back from Vietnam."

"You did?" I was surprised.

He nodded. "I have PTSD too, I've just learned how to handle it."

"I didn't know that, Dad."

"Well, it's not something I advertise," he said, "What we can do is try having someone read it out loud to you and see if that can help. If that doesn't work then we'll have to just have you try to memorize it later."

"Okay," I said.

"I'm sorry I got angry at you, Aly," Sam said, looking shame-faced, "I assumed that you were just slacking off like you did before and I shouldn't have. I didn't think that you could be having problems like ths."

"It's okay, Sam, you didn't know," I said.

"No, it's not okay," he said, "I shouldn't think the worst. I'm sorry," he put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it, "I need to be mindful of the fact that you're recovering from...a really bad experience, and you're not going to be the same way that you were before," he pulled a chair over and sat next to me, "Let me help you, okay? I'll read out loud to you and we'll see if that helps you."

He read my English assignment to me in paragraphs, and stopped to ask me questions, and wrote down my answers. I was able to concentrate on that, and he read part of the Latin prayer out loud to me too, and I was able to memorize the first couple of lines.

Calvin appeared in the doorway. "It's about time to break for lunch," he said, "Y'all have been workin' so hard it's the middle of the afternoon."

Dad fell into step next to me as we walked to the kitchen. "How are you feeling?" he asked me.

I shrugged. "A little tired."

"You've been working hard this morning, I'm proud of you for diving right back into things," he said.

I blushed, unsure of how to take him complimenting me. "Uh, thanks," I shrugged again, "I feel like I can't do much because of the, you know, reading thing."

"It will go back to how it was," he told me, "Your brain can only process so much, and you've had a lot going on these past few months. Take things slowly, and we'll be here to help you, all right?" he smiled at me.

"Okay, Dad," I wasn't used to him being so supportive and patient. Usually it was just 'follow my orders to the letter or risk getting into trouble'. I guessed that Dad really was trying to change.

Over the next few days we fell into a routine. I started to help with the cooking, and did some chores like laundry and kitchen clean-up. Sam and Dad and even Dean read my schoolwork out loud to me and helped me with that. I started to feel more relaxed and like things were 'getting back to normal'.

"Got a surprise for you tomorrow," Calvin told me at dinner one night, "We're gonna go out berry pickin' tomorrow. Jesse's got a friend with a farm about an hour away, and strawberries are in season right now."

"Is it...safe?" Dean asked. "I mean, it's been checked out?"

Calvin nodded. "We can place some wards around, and y'all have that prayer that the angel gave you. We'll leave early in the morning before the sun gets too hot. It'll be good to get y'all out of the house and into the fresh air."

I went with Sam and Dean in the Impala the next morning. It felt like it had been such a long time since I had been in the car, but it made me remember what had happened right before I ran away. I looked at the green cooler on the floor at my feet with guilt.

"What's up, Aly?" Sam had turned back and was looking at me, "Why do you have that look on your face?"

"I was just...remembering what happened before...before I ran away," I felt myself blushing, "I'm sorry, guys, I'm sorry I was such a pain in the ass and a brat-"

"Hey, that's enough," Dean said, "We were all at fault, okay? No more of that feeling guilty for you. Let it go."

I sighed. "Okay, I'll try," I said.

Dean turned the radio on and found a classic rock station, and that helped to distract me from my feelings.

The farm was huge, and they were open to the public. There were several families with small children there picking strawberries too. The ground was slightly muddy from a recent rain, so walking was difficult at certain times. We each had a flat cardboard box to put the berries in, and bending to pick the berries was hard on my back. Sam and Dean stayed with me on either side of me, one in front and one in back. Dean didn't pick any berries, he just drank his coffee and looked around.

"Mommy! Look at this ginormous berry I found!" a little girl ran by us, and stopped. She stared up at Sam, who was standing near me.

"You- you're tall, mister," she said with surprise, "Are you a giant?"

Sam chuckled, "No, just someone who is tall."

"Oh," she looked at him for another moment and then ran over to a woman who was a couple of rows away.

Dean chuckled, "Sammy, do you remember when Aly was little and I tried to make strawberry shortcake that one time, and she couldn't say it?"

"I think so, what was it that she said?" Sam frowned, trying to remember.

Dean grinned at him, "She said 'staw-bey shitcake'."

Sam laughed, "Oh yeah, I remember now. It was that summer that we were at that one motel out West for a while."

"I didn't get in trouble for saying shit?" I asked.

"Nah, you were like 3 or 4," Dean told me, "Dad wasn't around much either. Although...he did get kinda annoyed that we didn't...correct you from saying it wrong."

Sam shook his head, "That was all you, Dean, you thought it was funny."

"Well it was!" Dean said defensively, "And you weren't doing it on purpose, I couldn't help it that you mis-pronounced words!"

Just then I tripped over a vine and fell, getting mud all over my pants, and spilling my box. Sam and Dean helped me pick up the berries.

When we were all finished, and getting our boxes weighed, Calvin said, "The plan is to go to Jesse and Alma's tomorrow and she's gonna show us how to make jelly and can these."

"Will there be pie?" Dean asked.

Calvin grinned at him. "Being as that she does a lot of baking, I'm sure there will be. I'll let her know that you're asking after pie."

On the way back to Calvin's we stopped to put gas in the car. I got out to use the restroom. They were on the side of the building, and the doors could be seen from the gas pumps, so Dean nodded and told me to go ahead.

There were two stalls in the women's room. I was pulling my pants up when I heard someone come in, and then I heard a woman's voice say, "Dammit!"

A hand reached under the stall. "Hey, can you hand me some TP? This one's out," the voice said, and I got a chill. This was how I had met Meg, in a bathroom stall at a truck stop.

"Uh, yeah," I grabbed a wad of toilet paper and shoved it into the waiting hand.

I ran out of the stall and washed my hands quickly, not wanting to meet the person in the other stall. I knew that it was probably a complete stranger, but I still didn't want to risk it. I yanked the door open, and ran over to the car. Dean was just putting the nozzle back into the pump.

He turned to look at me as I grabbed the door and wrenched it open, then dove into the back seat and slammed it shut.

Sam was in the front passenger seat, and he turned towards me. "Aly? What's wrong?" His hazel eyes watched me with concern.

I felt panicky now, and my heart was pounding. "The bathroom- a woman- she asked me-"

Dean had opened his door and was leaning into the car. "Aly, are you okay? Did something happen?"

"The bathroom-" I panted.

Dean stood up and reached behind him, pulling a gun out of the back of his pants. I watched as he stalked towards the bathroom. A woman with short frizzy blonde hair came out, smoothing her skirt down, and glanced at him as he walked towards her. He opened the bathroom door and looking inside for a moment, then came back to the car.

He got in and turned to me again, "All right, what's going on?" he barked.

Tears came to my eyes, "Nothing! I mean- the woman in there asked me for some toilet paper, and it just- it reminded me of Meg, that's how—that's how I met her, at the truck stop, she asked me for some, and then when we came out of the stalls she introduced herself, and then her father rescued me when that guy attacked me—and it was all a set up, all of it," I wiped the tears that had started to fall.

Dean let out a breath. "So nothing happened?"

I shook my head. "No, nothing happened. It just reminded me."

Dean started the car, glancing around. "You see anything odd?"

Sam shook his head. "No, I didn't."

"Good." Dean pulled the car out into traffic.

"Guys, I'm sorry," I said hesitantly, "It was just me being paranoid, you know-"

"It's okay, Aly, you didn't do anything wrong," Sam said.

"Sammy, I want you saying that prayer right now, just to be on the safe side," Dean told him.

"All right," Sam faced forward and bowed his head slightly. I could hear him reciting in a half-whisper, and I sat back and looked out the window, trying to calm the anxiousness that I still felt.

Everyone else was already at Calvin's when we came into the kitchen.

Dad was at the counter pouring some coffee, and he turned as we walked in.  
"What happened to you?" he asked, when he saw my muddy pants.

"I tripped over a root and fell in the mud," I said.

"What's wrong?" Dad was looking at my face now. He set his mug down and came over to me. "Did something happen? You look anxious."

"Well- I, uh, it wasn't anything, really-"

"Tell me anyway," Dad said.

"We stopped at a gas station, and I went to the bathroom, a woman asked me for some toilet paper and it made me think of when I met Meg," I explained, "I started to get scared."

"I checked it out, there wasn't anything suspicious," Dean said, "Sammy said the prayer of protection all the way back."

Dad pulled me into a hug. "It must have really shocked you if you still look this upset," he said.

"I'm okay now," I said.

He let me go and looked me in the eyes. "Are you sure?"

I nodded, "Yeah, I am," I said, "I'm going to go change."

I walked into my bedroom and pulled out another pair of pants and a shirt. As I changed into the clean clothes, I started to shake. What had happened in the bathroom really had scared me, and being alone brought the fear back in full force.

I heard a tap on the door, and then it opened. Dad stuck his head in. "I just wanted to check—hey-" he came over to me quickly, looking at my face, "What's wrong?"

My breathing had started to ge shallow, and I was feeling more scared.

"Just—just feel—scared-about what happened-" I gasped out, "What if—she—was-Meg-" Tears came to my eyes and started to drip down my cheeks.

Dad took my hands. "I don't think she was, I think it was a coincidence. Nothing bad happened, and you're safe now."

"I—I didn't know—I don't—I thought—she was nice!" I burst out, "And it was—all-tricks and—and deception!" I started to cry harder.

Dad pulled me into a hug. "I know, sweetheart, I know, I'm sure you were scared and you just wanted help."

I threw my arms around him and clutched at his shirt, sobbing into his chest. His flannel smelled like wood smoke, just like always, and it comforted me.

"Shh, you're all right now, you're safe. Bad things happened in the past, but they're not happening now, and you're safe with us," I felt him rubbing my back, "Take a deep breath for me, come on," he said gently. I tried to slow my breathing, and took a deep breath, my chest still hitching with sobs.

"Good girl, take another," Dad breathed with me, and eventually my breathing slowed and I began to feel calmer.

He let me go, but put his hands on my face and made me look at him. "You're safe now, do you know that?"

I nodded.

"Say it for me, I'm safe now."

"I—I'm safe now."

"We're not going to let anything happen to you, all right?" Dad looked in my eyes.

I nodded again, and he leaned down and kissed my forehead.

He reached over and pulled some tissues out of the box on the dresser, handing them to me. I wiped my face and blew my nose.

"Do you want to come out to the kitchen?" he asked.

"No, I'm tired now," I murmured.

We moved over to the bed, and I laid down.

"Dad, will you...stay with me?" I asked shyly.

"Of course," he sat down on the edge of the bed. "Roll over and I'll rub your back."

I rolled over on my stomach, and he began to rub my back slowly, up and down strokes.

"This was one of the few things that could get you to sleep when you were younger," he told me, "You hated going to sleep, and would fuss and cry for a long time," he chuckled, "And Dean would always cave and take you out of your crib and hold you or let you fall asleep on the sofa with him. He hated it when you cried."

He stroked my hair back from my face. I was starting to fall asleep. I turned my head to look at him. "I love you, Daddy," I whispered, taking his hand and tucking it into my chest.

"I love you back, baby girl," he said, and I fell asleep.


End file.
